Entrepreneurship
Project
Teams and Meetings
You are to come
together in teams of 3 or 4 to put together an entrepreneurship.
The entrepreneurship
may be business, social, artistic or scientific. It may be
web-based or not. Projects from prior years included a music club
and store, a video game arcade and store, an internship-matching
service, a donations-matching service, internet custom-designed
clothing, virtual visits to college towns, a gluten-free bakery, laptop
personalization, a pet-sitting service for campus, and mat rentals for
the quad.
You will write a
business proposal for your entrepreneurship. We will discuss
business
proposals in more detail in October.
Generally, the paper
will dicuss
- what type of entrepreneurship this is and why it is
entrepreneurial
- the opportunity that it is built on
- the innovation that it requires
- how the entrepreneurship will use technology
- the market that it is intended for (including your market
research)
- how you will reach that market
- how you will make money
- why this is a sustainable idea
You will also produce
a web site for the project. If this is a web-based business, it
should be a mock-up of the web site. You do not need to handle user
inputs: you can just dummy up results for the demo. If it
is not a web-based business, you should provide a web site that
enhances the business.
You are expected to do
some marketing research. If you can find a way to
test market online (e.g., SurveyMonkey),
that will be great. More traditional methods
are also fine. Minimally, this requires that you talk to some
people who are your target audience and get feedback from them.
For those projects that will have university students as the target
population, I will set up a facebook group for the class. You
don't need to use it, but I'm hoping that it will help.
You will give a 20
minute presentation and demo to the class November 18, 20 or
25.
(Depending on the number of projects, we may drop this to 2
days.) The
presentation should cover the same material as the paper and the demo
should show off the key features of the web site. I will ask the
class to comment on all presentations.
There will be meetings
with me to review the fundamental concept, go over the first draft
of the paper, and walkthrough the presentation.
There is a lot of work
to do on this project and one of the first deliverables that I will be
asking
for is a schedule. It will be due in class next Thursday.
September 25: Team formation
We will do a quick pass around the room for anyone to propose an
entrepreneurship that
they would like to explore. The class will then have "mix and
mingle" time to form teams. Team formation
should consider
- mutual interest
- compatability
- ability to meet
While I know that you are still working on your case studies, I've
decided to move team formation up so that you can have work sessions on
the days that I will be out for Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur. I
know that everyone's schedule is jammed and I'm hoping that these work
sessions will be helpful.
October 2: Project description
and schedules
The project description should be 2-3 sentences describing the
entrepreneurship that you will be proposing.
The project schedule
should include every item in the above description and who
will be working on it. It is important to establish
expectations from the start.
The other schedule that you will
turn in is the times that your entire time can meet with me outside of
class hours. Please identify all times of at least 1 hour that
you can meet with me between 8 am and 6:30 pm Monday through
Friday. If there are no such times available, identify evening or
weekend times that you can meet with me, but please try hard
to find weekday times. Based on this information, I will atempt
to schedule review meetings.
Reminder:
Note the new missed meeting policy as shown on the home page and in the
syllabus.
November 4: Paper Draft
Electronic and hard copy. This is not expected to be a polished
paper (though the more polished
it is, the more feedback I can give you). I expect an outline of
all the information that will be in the paper. Areas that are
missing shoould describe how they will be addressed and when. I
will be focused on unrealistic assumptions and market issues or
competitions that you have not looked at. The concept should be
solidly described and the needed details well specified.
November
13: Draft Web Site
Send me the url
for the web site. I will review it and give you feedback
electronically. Note that if you are doing the web site for your
team, this draft can be done as an alternative to the assigned home page
November
25: Final Paper
and Web Site
The paper is due to me electronically and in hard copy. You
should send me the url
for the web site.
November
18-25: Presentation
Schedule to be posted.