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Entrepreneurship
Sara Theis, Director
Entrepreneurship Faculty Full Time: Yuhan (Jane) Hua
Major in Entrepreneurship
Students who complete a degree in Entrepreneurship will discover and create opportunities and engage their entrepreneurial spirit through a set of courses and experiences. The program is comprised of a pathway designed to prepare through real-world challenges that allow students to learn tools and skills and have significant real-world practice and reflection. From core courses in business creation to essential tools in customer discovery and financial decision making, students will gain confidence to continue on to practical applications on entrepreneurship and foundational and historical theory, and students will continue on to create their own entrepreneurial ventures or proposed solutions to identified problems.
Students will engage in various student-run ventures, have an entrepreneurial internship experience, and a personalized entrepreneurship practicum capstone experience. Experiences will engage both opportunity recognition as well as passion and talent approaches to entrepreneurship.
Performance Learning
Performance Learning is inherently aligned with the entrepreneurship major. In order to solve problems, connecting with customers outside of the university is essential. Students in the entrepreneurship program will find opportunities to seek solutions in their community, country and internationally. Students will create and run businesses, engage in student-run ventures, and use Lean Startup methods to seek creative solutions to problems in the world.
Career Opportunities
Entrepreneurship careers transcend specific job titles, career paths and industries. While it can mean starting a business, entrepreneurship graduates often work for companies and organizations who are eager to find employees who can take initiative, build a plan around an idea or opportunity and understand how to create value. Entrepreneurs create products, services, companies, and even industries. Employers rate creativity and innovation among the top 5 job skills that will continue to increase in importance. Graduates with entrepreneurial aspirations can be found in start-ups, venture capital firms, strategic entrepreneurial units in companies and public policy areas. Most notably, entrepreneurship graduates will hone their skills by expertly putting voice to their vision, working dynamically in teams to drive results, and pushing the envelope.
Learning Goals for the Entrepreneurship Major
• Students will recognize and identify the needs, problems, and demands of a market. • Students will analyze environmental, political, economic, legal, and ethical risks and rewards of ownership. • Students will identify the financial, human, and physical resources they need, where to obtain them, and how to best utilize them. • Students will create, lead, and own business ventures.
Requirements for the Entrepreneurship Major
In addition to the business core courses, students will be required to complete 22 credits of entrepreneurship courses:
Required courses (22 credits)
ET235. Customer Discovery (3) ET260. Designing Your Life (1) BU260. Business Law (3) ET340. Foundations of Entrepreneurship (3) ET381/382. Entrepreneurship Practicum (3)
Choose 6 credits of Entrepreneurship Application
ET380. Art of Entrepreneurship (3) ET383. Innovation Lab (3) ET400. Small Business Consulting (3)
Choose 3 credits of Student-Run Venture experience
AR325. Branding & Package Design (3) AR380. Carriage House Fine Art Press (1-3) AR390/ET390. Blue Connection (1-3) EN384. Bronze Man Books (1-3) EN386. Blue Satellite (1-3) ES360. Big Blue Personal Training (1) ET391. Blue Brew Coffee Shop (1-3) IS390. MU Performance Consulting (1) MC115. Arts Café (2) MC210. Millikin Audio Recording Studio (2) MC360. Millikin Industry Studies Tour (1) MC390. First Step Records (1) TH390. Pipe Dreams Studio Theatre (1-3) Other courses may qualify. Consult your academic advisor for information.
A grade of C+ or better is required for the following courses: ET340. Foundations of Entrepreneurship ET471/472. Entrepreneurial Internship
Minor in Entrepreneurship
The entrepreneurship minor is for students who want to own a business, take ownership of projects within an organization, or be a self-employed free agent. As an entrepreneurship minor, students will learn to recognize opportunities, assess risk, and marshal resources. While practicing and mastering their craft in their major, students will experience and perform business ownership and operations in one of Millikin's student-run ventures or their own business.
The minor in Entrepreneurship requires a minimum of 22 credits. The minor in Entrepreneurship is offered to provide the business or non-business student with the fundamental principles it takes to create, lead and own a business. The minor in Entrepreneurship is available to students majoring in the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Professional Studies, the College of Fine Arts and the Tabor School of Business.
Performance Learning
Performance Learning initiatives for 3rd parties in the community includes creating and running a business and managing a student-run venture.
Learning Goals for the Entrepreneurship Minor
• Utilize frameworks of innovation to identify and capitalize on the needs, problems, and demands of a market.. • Analyze environmental, political, economic, legal, and ethical risks and rewards of ownership. • Identify the financial, human, physical, and intellectual resources they need, where to obtain them, and how best to utilize them. • Use the tools and skills of their discipline with a strong emphasis on practice.
Students in the Entrepreneurship Minor will be required to complete at least 22 semester hours of business and entrepreneurship courses:
Required courses (22 credits)
ET230. Financial Decision Making (3) OR AC230. Intro to Financial Statements (3) ET235. Customer Discovery (3) ET260. Designing Your Life (1) ET340. Foundations of Entrepreneurship (3) MK200. Principles of Marketing (3)
Choose 6 credits of Entrepreneurship Application
ET380. Art of Entrepreneurship (3) ET382. Entrepreneurship Practicum (3) ET383. Innovation Lab (3) ET400. Small Business Consulting (3) Other approved 300/400 Electives
Choose 3 credits of Student-Run Venture experiences
See approved list of Student-Run Ventures.
Commercialization & Innovation Certificate
In the Commercialization and Innovation Certificate students learn to innovate, create, lead, and own a venture. Coursework in the certificate program is designed to teach students to recognize opportunities, marshal resources, and assess risks. Students will be exposed to many activities of entrepreneurship, including customer-driven opportunities, design thinking, market research, prototyping a new product or service, developing and iterating business models, attracting capital, networking with other active entrepreneurs, and starting a business. This certificate is not available to Entrepreneurship majors. Certificate courses must be completed with a grade of “C” or better.
Requirements for the Commercialization & Innovation Certificate (13 credits)
Required courses (4 credits):
ET260. Designing Your Life (1) ET340. Foundations of Entrepreneurship (3)
Electives (choose 9 credits):
MK307. IMC Campaigns (3) AR325. Branding and Package Design (3) OL375. Organizational Creativity, Innovation, and High Performance (3) ET380. Art of Entrepreneurship (3) ET382. Entrepreneurship Practicum (3) ET383. Innovation Lab (3)
Entrepreneurship Certificate
The Entrepreneurship Certificate balances the theoretical and practical perspectives of Entrepreneurship. Students will be connected with local small businesses to observe and learn from their day to day operation. Various student-run ventures also allow students manage and operate their ventures independently. The learning in the classroom will be used to solve the real world problems. Certificate courses must be completed with a grade of "C" or better.
Requirements for the Entrepreneurship Certificate (13 credits)
Required courses (10 credits): ET235. Customer Discovery (3) ET260. Designing Your Life (1)
ET340. Foundations of Entrepreneurship (3) ET400. Small Business Consulting (3)
Choose 3 credits of Student-Run Venture experience.
See approved list of Student-Run Ventures.
Entrepreneurship Courses (ET) (Credits)
ET100. Business Creation (3)
Designed to provide students with a basic understanding of business, this course is built around the introduction and integration of business functions like accounting, marketing, human resources, logistics, and information technology that business owners must manage. Those business functions and the concepts of teams, leadership, ethics, and professionalism are explored through the development of a team-designed business model and pitch presentation. This course must be co-horted with ET111, Team Dynamics.
ET111. Team Dynamics (1)
A hands-on course designed to prepare students for the world of teams. The course focus is the development of students’ understanding of team dynamics including team formation, member roles, leadership, group norms, the role of conflict and diversity management. This course must be co-horted with ET100, Business Creation.
ET230. Financial Decision Making (3)
This course takes a look at the ways that entrepreneurs need to understand the finances and accounting principles behind the decisions that they make with regards to funding, launching and operating a venture. This course is a practical look at solving key problems like calculating breakeven point, reading and understanding financial statements and their components, and identifying, analyzing and utilizing contemporary ways of financing startups.
ET235. Customer Discovery (3)
This course will apply design thinking and the lean startup process to understand customer needs and pains and validate the aforementioned through market experimentation. Students will learn to create a hypothesis of customer needs, identify customer segments, perform customer interviews in various contexts, conduct validation experiments, and analyze feedback.
ET260. Designing Your Life (1)
This 1 credit hour course will provide students with the opportunity to explore their values, talents and passions, and design three possible life plans for themselves based on these things. This course is designed to help students embrace creation and leadership as life-long activities by both direct and indirect means. This class explore how each of us is capable of creating the future, by founding a business, steering and developing an artistic or scientific careers, creating and utilizing new networks, and more. Students will use self-analysis, observations, readings and discussions to develop possible life plans.
ET310. Social Entrepreneurship (1)
This course module will examine how social entrepreneurship balances moral imperatives and profit motives while addressing social problems or needs that are unmet by private markets or governments.
ET320. Funding New Ventures (1)
This course module will cover how to determine the initial capital requirements, capital needs, and the planning of future capital requirements for business startups. Raising the needed capital for a startup is ultimately up to the entrepreneur so this course will also cover the sources of funding, how to find them, how to relate to them, and how each funding source impacts the business and the entrepreneur.
ET330. Corporate Entrepreneurship (1)
This course module is about investigating and understanding the frameworks of corporate entrepreneurship as a strategy for business renewal and capturing value in the marketplace by creating an innovative and entrepreneurial culture. Students will gain an understanding of the nature of entrepreneurship as a catalyst for change through innovation.
ET333. Global Social Entrepreneurship (3)
This course will examine social entrepreneurship on a global scale, addressing social problems and needs that are unmet by private markets or governments. Students will develop social value propositions, articulate pros and cons of various funding options, and assess unique governance, transparency and legal needs of social enterprises. Students will also apply knowledge by consulting with global social enterprise firms and microfinance funds.
ET340. Foundations of Entrepreneurship (3)
This course will provide students with the understanding of the entrepreneurship process: Recognize opportunity, identify target market, convert idea to concept, determine and acquire resources, implement and lead the organization, and harvest and exit. Searching for a valid business model, students will take their business idea through the process and create a feasibility study and operating plan. Students will also acquire an understanding of business ethics and social responsibility in business creation.
ET360. Special Topics in Entrepreneurship (1-3)
This course provides either an in-depth study of a particular topic or broad view of several topics of current interest in the entrepreneurship area. The course incorporates relevant experiential learning activities such as case and field trips where appropriate.
ET380. The Art of Entrepreneurship (3)
The course provides students with the full range of practical application of entrepreneurial theories behind new venture creation. Students will ideate, pitch, fund, launch, and harvest a micro-venture of their own imagination and/or passion. The course focuses on understanding the process of creativity and opportunity recognition and introduces students to the risks and rewards of ownership through a venture of their own design. The course engages in new venture creation, customer empathy, sales and income generation, and documentation. Finally, students keep the profits from their venture, and some students choose to continue their venture following the course.
ET381, 382. Entrepreneurship Practicum (1-3)
All entrepreneurship students are required to take at least 3 credits of ET381, 382 Entrepreneurship Practicum, during which they research, validate and launch an entrepreneurial venture of their own interest and passion with guidance from a faculty advisor. Students must present their venture to third party stakeholders at business plan competitions, to a panel of judges, or at a public event. Practicum experiences can take time to develop. Students may begin their practicum with 1 credit as a junior, but cannot complete it until they are a senior.
ET383. Innovation Lab (3) This course will provide innovators with the frameworks to innovate within their discipline(s), define and understand customer markets, research opportunities, develop a prototype. The course focuses on understanding the process of creativity regardless of discipline and from idea through prototype, and introduces students to the meaning and implications of innovation. This is primarily a Performance Learning course with measurable objectives and activities.
ET390. Blue Connection (1-3)
Students enrolled in ET390 are the Gallery Team of Blue Connection, Millikin’s student-run retail art gallery. The Gallery Team meets weekly to establish goals for management, inventory, marketing, collaboration and finance. They set timelines and execute plans in addition to presenting reports to faculty and advisory boards. Emphasis is placed on strategic planning, opportunity recognition, and ownership.
ET391. Blue Brew (1-3)
Students enrolled in ET391 comprise the operations, management, finance, and development teams of Blue Brew, Millikin’s student-run coffee shop. The teams meet weekly to establish goals for management, inventory, marketing, finance and more. They set timelines and execute plans in addition to presenting reports to faculty, partners and advisory boards. Emphasis is placed on strategic planning, opportunity recognition, ownership, and community partnership.
ET400. Small Business Consulting (3)
Designed to help students integrate previously studied business disciplines by consulting with firms seeking management assistance. Students work in teams to apply theoretical knowledge to the solution of real business problems.
ET442. Ideation and Market Validation (5)
This course is a starting point for a student’s entrepreneurial journey within the Accelerated program. It covers topics through the lens of the entrepreneurial mindset by developing concepts using Effectuation, Agile, and Detachment while learning the importance of pivoting and refining their ideas throughout the Accelerator experience. In this course, students will generate and evaluate their unique business ideas. Tools and topics will include the Business Model Canvas, Lean Startup marketing, customer discovery and development, financial statements and legal issues with market validation. The goal for these immersive modules is to synergize the topics such that students can appreciate and understand how they all work together to create a comprehensive understanding of how entrepreneurs create value. Students will develop skills such that they can identify the components of a valid business idea that combines passion, interests or competencies and real-world needs.
ET444. Leveraging Resources & Logistics (5)
In this course, students will learn about what it would take to execute their business ideas. They will learn the principles of running a business through modules such as marketing campaigns, creating a web storefront, implementing technology, creating partnership, utilizing legal frameworks, and creative funding. Students should be able to identify key resources needed to act on venture ideas. Students will be guided to leverage and utilize the resources they have and the importance of establishing partnerships to cover resources and skills they do not possess. The course focused on leverage partnership outside of the company include networking, partner identification, communicating with partners, outsourcing, and internationalization strategies. Students will learn how to marshal the resources internally and externally to accomplish their goals.
ET446. Commercialization and Entrepreneurial Communications (5)
Students will learn how to commercialize a venture and communicate with investors. Modules include licensing, employee recruitment, venture finance, and exit strategy and will expose students to consider how to scale a startup. During this section, entrepreneurs, mentors, and investors with diverse backgrounds will also meet with students and offer their feedback and suggestions and allow students to demonstrate networking competencies. Modules such as business process auditing, strategic pricing, positioning and marketing strategies, pitching ideas in diverse contexts, responding to offers, etc., will prepare students with various tools and skills to promote their venture ideas to outside customers and audiences in the final presentation and beyond.
ET470, 471. Entrepreneurial Internship (1-3)
A cooperative course between the University and selected businesses to develop further professional training of entrepreneurship majors. Combination of work experience and written reports.
