KEY BENEFITS

• Build a deep understanding of the world of entrepreneurship and new venture strategy, including the development of a set of models for writing and assessing venture capital quality business plans.
• Understand the roles and structure of venture capital firms and their criteria for funding businesses. Also learn about more traditional methods (bank loans, friends and family, SBA) to secure funding for a new business. Understand how to create, and analyze, financial projections and financial statements.
• Develop a framework for creating and evaluating venture-capital quality business plans. Incorporate this framework into your business plan.
• Analyze and evaluate cases and lessons from failed startup ventures. Learn from their mistakes.
• Understand the latest academic and professional thinking on e-business and the "new" economy.
• Develop a game-theoretic framework for strategy and understand such concepts as complements, bundling, bidding, boundaries and scope, cannibalization, compensation schemes, value net, imitation, negotiations, and perceptions. Apply this framework to your business plan.
• Understand the resource-based view approach to strategy including such concepts as imitability, durability, substitutability, appropriability, and competitive superiority. Incorporate these lessons into your business plan.
• Evaluate the strategy literature (Porter, Hamel) with an eye toward formulating new, digital strategy frameworks.
• Review and understand essential topics in competitive strategy such as industry analysis, competitive advantage, positioning, entry, basic game theory, competitive pricing, commitment, antitrust, and vertical integration
• Build a deep understanding of customers and the marketing mix. You will be exposed to the classic "3C and 4P" analysis to marketing and understand such models and tools as perceptual maps, market sizing techniques, and Porter¹s Five Forces.
• Learn a new methodology for designing, testing, and bringing new products to market. Learn how to construct surveys, interviews, and focus groups; you will learn quantitative methods for evaluating the data. Finally, you will conduct these activities during the program for your own new product.
• Learn about 22 profit models and apply one (or several) to your new business. Explore new and emerging e-commerce revenue models.
• Explore the myths and realities of the "first mover advantage".
• Understand important themes in the behavioral science literature such as causation, framing, metadecisions, boundaries, reference points, metaphors, judgment overconfidence, seeking disconfirming evidence, etc.
• Understand the legal aspects of launching a new venture. Develop an understanding of Internet law, including domain names, copyright, commercial models, legal infrastructure, etc. [Note]
• Learn cutting-edge techniques for networking, negotiations, and relationship building.
• Learn how to present your business plan to a group of investors.

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