RonJoyceCenterforBusinessStudies
Department of Commerce, Faculty of Social Sciences
Fall 2016
Course Title & Number: Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation, COMM 3361
Instructor:
Dr. M. Nauman Farooqi
Office: 204 Avard-Dixon
Class meets every Thursday from 3:00 pm to 5:50 pm in AVDX 117
Office Tel: 364-2281, Fax: 364-2625, email: nfarooqi@mta.ca
Consultation: Wednesday 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm or by appointment.
Course Overview:
This course is aimed at identifying and developing key skills necessary for entrepreneurship and
new venture creation. Some of these skills include leadership, team building, initiative, problem
solving, decision-making and communication. An experiential approach to learning will be used
in this course. Many business schools around the globe have used this approach for
management development. Soon after the semester starts, the students will organize
themselves into groups (number of groups will depend on students registered for the course)
and undertake the setting up and running of a successful entrepreneurial venture. Past
experience in conducting similar courses has shown that students gain tremendously from the
experiential approach and leave with a deeper understanding of the key issues involved in
setting up and running a successful entrepreneurial enterprise. They also find out whether they
are cutout for this career choice or not.
The course will assist students in examining the process of business venture creation & start-up
and the role of the entrepreneur in this process. Students will explore business opportunity
assessment, structure and function of the business plan, new venture financing, legal and
regulatory aspects of start-up, etc. Some of the problems of entrepreneurial ventures that
students will be exposed to include; the choice of purpose, competitive advantage, ownership
and management structure, planning, database management, financing, financial management,
marketing, molding of organizational characters and mobilization of resources for attainment of
goals in the face of adverse circumstances.
The course will involve student groups in setting up and running a successful for-profit business
enterprise. The group members will invest in the enterprise and wear two hats; shareholder and
manager. Despite the fact that the company will be modeled after an entrepreneurial venture,
the project entails the establishment of a management hierarchy with clear lines of reporting,
commensurate responsibility and authority, documentation and record keeping etc.
The
business enterprises created by the student groups will be legally incorporated (the papers will
not be filed, short of that all documentation will be done) and will be responsible for preparing
standard financial statements, which will be audited by a firm of chartered accountants (or an
individual chartered accountant). Depending on their availability, senior Accounting, Finance
and Marketing students will be appointed as consultants to these companies to provide any
advice in their area of expertise. The entire process will be squeezed into the time frame of one
semester.
My expectations from the students in this course will be quite high; the students are required to
be self-motivated and willing to take on the responsibility of managing the venture themselves.
Past experience in similar courses has shown that students enjoyed the hands-on experience
that this course provided. This positive experience, however, calls for a strong commitment on
part of students to allocate the time necessary to carry forward the entrepreneurial project.
A brief layout of how the class will proceed follows, more details will be given in the first class.
After an initial introduction in the first session, students will be asked to organize themselves
into groups. The instructor will then seek applications from individuals in each group for the
position of the President of the company. The applications and the interview, which follow, will
be formal in all respects (formal letter, CV, formal attire etc.). Once the president has been
selected, the groups will meet and elect their Chairperson of the Board through a secret ballot.
The Chairperson and the President will then interview students from within their groups and
assign specific jobs to them. At the end of this process each student will act both as a
shareholder (member of the board of directors in the venture) in the company as well as a
manager.
The company will now meet to address what, why and how to questions. The company will
formally meet during class time every week; the instructor will attend these meetings. The
company may also decide to meet at other times to conduct the affairs of the venture. Special
consideration should be given to scheduling these meetings at a mutually convenient time.
Proper minutes of all meetings will be recorded and filed in the company binder (more
information on the binder will follow).
This course also involves mandatory participation in a one-day experiential training program at
Camp Centennial in Moncton on Sunday, September 11. The camp will start at 9:00 am and
end at 4:00 pm. Lunch will be provided.
As funding plays a key role in any new venture, another element introduced in the course is
accessibility to financial support for projects (up to a maximum of $5000). Formal loan
proposals will be submitted to a loan committee along with complete business plans. Decisions
will be made after review of these documents and after an appearance and presentation before
the loan committee. The deadline for loan applications is Monday, September 26. Decisions on
the applications will be made by Friday, October 03. The loan will involve standard
documentation and interest payments.
The venture group/s will be using the Business Model Canvas (BMC) to develop their ideas.
The BMC is a new approach for launching and validating ideas. The approach consists of nine
key areas which every innovator needs to look at to move their idea forward. These nine key
areas include; customer segments, customer relationships, channels, revenue streams, value
proposition, key resources, key activities, key partners and cost structure This approach is more
pragmatic as it allows for the entrepreneur to identify key points related to their idea in the form
of assumptions and then allows them to test these assumptions in the real world. The feedback
provides significant input from the market allowing for tweaking of the BMC and addition of new
points/assumptions which are then again subjected to feedback and data from the real world.
This iterative process allows the entrepreneur to streamline their idea at a very initial stage
before moving forward and executing the idea. This approach has been successfully used
across the world and received positive reviews both in terms of its simplicity as well as the
ability to streamline the innovator’s business idea at the very early stage.
The grading process will continue throughout the semester and will consist of individual and
group grading. As the enterprise will be for-profit, the group/company giving the highest return
will get bonus points, other aspects such as level of organization, team effort, coordination,
venture selected etc. will also be used for evaluation. Depending upon the availability of guest
speakers, we may have one or two guest lecture sessions.
Course Pre-requisites:
Management Accounting (COMM 2131) and Fundamentals of Marketing (COMM2201) and
registration in the third year; or permission of the Department.
Suggested Text:
The Startup Equation – A Visual Guidebook for Building your Startup
By: Steven Fisher and Ja-Nae Duane
Publisher: McGraw Hill Education, ISBN: 978-0-07-183236-6
Supplementary Material:
Small Business Canada, Realm, Entrepreneur, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times,
Business Week, Fortune, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, The Globe and Mail financial
pages, Toronto Star financial pages, Young Entrepreneurs Connection.
Attendance:
Students are expected to attend all meetings/classes.
meetings/classes without any penalty.
Students may miss one of the
Grading & Evaluation:
The grading process will continue throughout the semester and will consist of individual and
group evaluations. Other aspects such as level of organization, team effort, coordination, etc.
will also be used for evaluation.
It is only through consistent and meaningful contribution on an individual and team basis that
the students can give evidence that she/he has made use of this course. While this portion of
the grade is subjective, it is accomplished in a systematic fashion and made on observations
made over an entire semester. Performance of the student will be monitored in respect of the
duties assigned to them, peer evaluation, commitment to organizational objectives, leadership,
team building, initiative, problem solving, decision-making, communication skills to name a few.
This will be a very challenging course and students should be well aware of the demands the
course will make on their time and the level of effort required to successfully pass this course.
The details of the grading scheme are as follows:
Grading
Individual Learning Report
Department Learning Report
Company Learning Report
Journal Articles Presentation
Mid-Semester Peer Evaluation
Company Binder & Performance
Group Performance
End-of-Semester Peer Evaluation
Frequency
Once every 3 weeks
Once every 3 weeks
Once a month
Once every 3 weeks
Once
Once
Once
Once
Number
Percentage
Total
4
4
2
4
1
1
1
1
2.5%
2.5%
7.5%
5%
10%
15%
10%
10%
TOTAL
10%
10%
15%
20%
10%
15%
10%
10%
100%
CALENDER
Activity
September
October
November
December
Individual Learning Report
Department Learning Report
Company Learning Report
Journal Articles Presentation
Mid-Semester Peer Evaluation
Company Binder & Performance
End-of-Semester Peer Evaluation
Guest Speaker – TBA
22
29
6, 20
13, 27
27
3
17
1
1
Can be scheduled on any class day – sign-up in advance – first-come-first-serve
Thursday, October 13
Thursday, December 01
Thursday, December 01
TBA
TBA
TBA
Students will get individual feedback for at least 20% of the total grade by the end of the
withdrawal period.
Learning Reports:
The individual, department and company learning reports will be submitted in hardcopy to the
instructor. Template for these reports will be emailed to the class. Students will draw upon their
experiences of running the venture and supplement this with the text readings and journal
articles to write these reports.
Each report will include the following:
§
§
§
§
§
§
§
Identify accomplishments from last Learning Report
Identify lessons learned
Clearly define the issues/problems faced in the previous reporting period
Identify clear goals set for tackling the issues identified (above)
Identify tasks necessary to achieve goals
Provide a timeline to achieve these objectives
Comments
Journal Articles:
Each venture is required to present four articles from entrepreneurship journals during the
semester. Three of these articles must be from academic journals. The articles should relate
entrepreneurship theme with the departments’ activities (for example the marketing department
may want to discuss an article related to marketing issues in entrepreneurship ventures). See
the last section of the outline for listing of the sources of information. The presentations should
be planned that each member of the group is involved in at least one presentation
Company Binder
The group will document all activities and work of the venture in a detailed binder. The binder
will contain administrative, marketing, management, legal and financial information. The binder
will serve to provide a detailed history of the company from inception to closure. The binder will
be submitted to the instructor on the last day of classes. The company will arrange to have their
books audited by a chartered accountant (individual or firm) and submit these along with the
company binder at the end of the semester. Sample binders from previous classes are
available with the instructor for review.
Peer Evaluation:
As an important element of success is based on teamwork, the peer assessment will allow for
capturing this contribution of each member of the team.
The pass percentage for the course is 50%. The grading scheme is as follows:
Marks
90-100
84-89.99
80-83.99
77-79.99
74-76.99
70-73.99
67-69.99
64-66.99
60-63.99
57-59.99
54-56.99
50-53.99
0-49.99
Letter Grade
A+
A
AB+
B
BC+
C
CD+
D
DF
On-line Resources:
http://www.startupequation.com/blog/
Business Models:
• Freemium Pitfalls and Solutions
• Business Model Innovations
Canvases:
• Business Model Canvas
• How to Use the Business Model Canvas
• Value Proposition Canvas
• Lean Canvas
• How to Use Lean Canvas / Theory Behind Lean Canvas
• Stanford’s Social Entrepreneurship Canvas
• socialbusinessmodelcanvas.com
Other Resources
http://www.skollfoundation.org/aboutsocialentrepreneurship/index.asp Skoll Foundation Social Entrepreneurship
http://bsa.canadabusiness.ca/gol/bsa/site.nsf/en/su06909.html, New Brunswick Entrepreneur
Guide
http://realm.net/index-e.cfm, Realm magazine
http://www.smallbusinesscanada.ca/, Small Business magazine
http://www.smallbizinfocenter.com/, Small Business Information Center
http://www.canadaone.com/ezine/index.html, Small Business Information
http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/sc_mangb/contact/engdoc/homepage.html, Government of Canada
http://www.cfib.ca/default_E.asp, Canadian Federation of Small Business
http://www.cvca.ca/, Canadian Venture Capital
http://www.cdnbizwomen.com/, Women’s Small Business Network
www.cybf.ca, Canada Youth Business Foundation
http://www.entrepreneurmag.com/
http://www.bdc.ca/bdc/home/Default.asp, Business development Bank of Canada
http://www.acoa.ca/e/index.shtml, Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency
http://www.acoa.ca/e/financial/capital.shtml