Master of Business Administration: Entrepreneurship Concentration

This course covers the essential business management competencies to start and operate a small business. Topics include fundamentals about small business, essential management and leadership skills, startup opportunity analysis/assessment, preparing a business plan, marketing strategies, financial management, human resource management, franchising, governmental regulation, taxation, and various other legal issues pertaining to small businesses. Lecture Pre-requisites: MGMT 608, Entrepreneurship. 3 Units.

Building on the process model of entrepreneurial venture-creation, this course focuses on the pre-startup, startup, and early growth of new business ventures. The new ventures creation phase involves identifying opportunities, matching business ideas and opportunities with aspiring entrepreneurs, and identifying funding venues. Subject matter of the course is organized around the following themes: seeking and evaluating opportunities for new ventures; leveraging resources to convert those opportunities into concrete business propositions; and developing appropriate entry and exit strategies. Taking an applied approach, each student will work with a local entrepreneur or small business and develop a detailed startup financial plan for a new venture that has the potential to secure a prospective investor. Lecture Pre-requisites: MGMT 608, Entrepreneurship. 3 Units.

This course focuses on the challenges and opportunities of managing the interests of two distinct, yet connected institutions: the business and the family. Perhaps the oldest form of business organizations, a family-owned business denotes any business in which two or more family members are involved and the majority of ownership or control lies within a family. Key topics include understanding the uniqueness of family business in terms of culture, stages of evolution, career planning, business ownership, family structure, hiring relatives, sibling rivalry, insurance, and legal issues, and organizational issues, such as succession and estate planning. Real-world family cases are examined in-depth and local family business owners serve as invited speakers. Lecture Pre-requisites: MGMT 608, Entrepreneurship. 3 Units.

The course will give students an opportunity to develop an understanding and critical awareness of current theories and approaches relevant to managing creativity, innovation, and change in the workplace on a personal, organizational, and national level in a world characterized by the globalized economy. Knowledge of various techniques, strategies, and skills appropriate for creative and innovative thinking will be drawn upon through a series of lectures, workshops, and small-group learning. Lecture Pre-requisites: None. 3 Units.

This course introduces students to social entrepreneurs and their organizations within a global context. The course will draw upon instructor and guest lectures, 2021-2022 Course Catalog 121 case studies, individual and team work. Students will Administration Master of Business identify in teams a local and an international social entrepreneurial venture, which they will explore in depth, and present to their peers. Individually, they will embark on a preliminary mission toward the creation of a social entrepreneurial venture that they feel passionate about. The course will explore questions such as:

• What are the common characteristics of social entrepreneurs and their organizations regardless of their location and operating industry?
• How do the local circumstances influence the problems they address, the organizational and business models they decide to pursue, and their growth options?
• When and how do they engage in partnerships with one another and with business or public sectors, and how do these partnerships perform?

This course focuses on creative thinking as the key to organizational innovation. Students will be challenged to define or reframe problems and formulate solutions or approaches that diverge from the norm. Design thinking and decision making—among other options— will be central themes of the course, thus responding to contemporary organizational requirements of thinking beyond dated horizons and exploring the most viable solutions given skills and resources available. Through exercises involving task-force approaches, project development and proposal completion, and reflection upon various problem-solving methods, students will develop the ability to think critically and creatively when faced with challenges. With the philosophical roots of politics, ethics, globalization, and economic and financial trends revealed, students will be encouraged to step outside of narrow perceptional frameworks and into the broad and creative realm of current and future managerial performance.