Courses - Winter 2011
Fall
2011 Courses | Winter 2011 Courses | Ross
Course Descriptions
Course Descriptions
FIN 325 Entrepreneurial Finance
This course is open to all BBA students and presents the fundamentals of venture capital and private equity finance. It is focused on financing startup and early stage, technology-based firms, later stage investment and buyouts. The course covers venture capital and private equity market structure and institutional arrangements and the application of financial theory and methods in a venture capital and private equity setting. Four men aspects of venture capital and private equity are covered: valuation, deal structuring, governance, and harvesting. "Live" case studies are used in demonstrate the practical, hands-on application of techniques following their development in class.
ES/MKT 325 New Product and Innovation Management
This course is designed to focus on the new product development process which is key to the success of any organization. The course will expose students to (a) creative techniques for idea generation, (b) fine-tuning these ideas to develop products and services that meet specific consumer needs, and (c) testing the feasibility of these ideas. The course uses lectures, cases, and outside speakers. Moreover, the course includes a project wherein student teams need to use the creativity techniques covered in this class to come up with new product ideas and perform a concept test to evaluate their feasibility. The course will be useful to students interested in product/brand management, management consulting, and entrepreneurship.
Cross-listed with MKT 325.
ES 395 Entrepreneurial Management
This course is a pragmatic, "real-world" orientation
to the entrepreneurial process of conceiving and implementing
an idea for a new venture. It is intended for students
who have strong aspirations to eventually develop their
careers in the context of entrepreneurial firms. Specific
objectives of the course are for students to: gain experience
identifying and screening potential business ideas; understand
the early stage development of a business idea into a
opportunity with the potential to generate profits or
other desirable returns; understand capital and other
resource requirements, and how to gain access to them;
develop managerial confidence through the creation of
a compelling business plan; and to experience the intensive,
give-and-take of a team effort directed toward a specific
goal. Advisory Prerequisites: A272 & M300. Cross-listed
with CSIB 395.
ES 504 Legal Aspects of Entrepreneurship
Legal Aspects of Entrepreneurship --- LAW- Law provides entrepreneurs with many opportunities for competitive advantage. This course offers an examination of the issues that every entrepreneur should understand, from start-up to IPO. These issues include legal concerns that arise when you leave your current employer to start a business, creating an appropriate ownership structure, funding the venture, contracting with vendors and customers, hiring and retaining the best staff, protecting
your intellectual property, and going public.
Meets the MBA legal/ethics requirement. Cross-listed with LHC 504.
ES 515 Introduction to Entrepreneurship
Introduction to Entrepreneurship --- Targeted toward graduate students of business as well as those in engineering and scientific disciplines, this elective course is designed to provide students with an introductory overview of the world of venturing - that is, to give students a broad sense of the business fundamentals needed to plan, launch and grow a new startup business. Taught by a veteran entrepreneur and comprised of six (6) weekly, 3-hour evening sessions, this course employs a mix of class discussions, readings, lectures, group exercises, homework assignments and guest speakers to expose students to key models, concepts and terminology that together will provide both business students and technologists/scientists with a conceptual framework to better understand the entrepreneurial world, how it works, and how to navigate it and succeed in it.
ES 569 Managing the Growth of New Ventures
New entrepreneurial ventures, once successfully past the
formation stage, often encounter problems caused by their
very rapid growth. Different functional and technical
skills are needed. More reliable information is a must.
External support groups (bankers, attorneys, accountants,
and investors) and new company employees both have to
be integrated into the goals and operations of the firm.
The activities of the entrepreneur have to change, from
innovation to delegation, communication, and organization.
This is a very basic change that many entrepreneurs never
make. The purpose of the course is to convey in a very
pragmatic fashion the reason, the areas, the tools, and
the urgency of that critical leadership change. Advisory
Prerequisites: STRATEGY 502/601.
ES 615 New Venture Creation
This course focuses on the preparation of the business
plan for new ventures. Competitive positions, marketing
policies, research surveys, production methods, financial
projections and organizational assignments all have to
be included in this document. The course is taught both
through the case method and through team projects involving
4-6 students working on a business development project
for the entire term. The business plan project requires
a substantial amount of research, team and faculty meetings,
detailed and carefully constructed deliverables, and the
final delivery of a full business plan. Advisory Prerequisites:
Completion of MBA core.
ES/FIN 626 Venture Capital & Private Equity Finance
in Transitional Economies
As the third course in the sequence, this course extends
the coverage of venture capital and private equity from
the US model to other parts of the globe. Similarities
and differences among regions and countries are examined
and related to fundamental forces such as political, cultural,
legal and regulatory differences. Emphasis is placed on
investment characteristics found in emerging markets and
in developed markets of the world. Text, cases and live
deals are employed to study the issues involved. As with
the earlier courses, this course applies simulation and
real options technology to the valuation issues involved
as well as game theory to the negotiating of contracts
among the several categories of players mentioned above.
Familiarity with these valuation technologies is a necessary
prerequisite for the course. Cross-listed with FIN 626.
BIT/MKT 678 Service Innovation Management
Service Innovation Management focuses on the process
of designing innovative new information-based services,
including problem definition, research, design, development,
and execution. Concepts include blueprinting, ideation,
blue ocean strategy, branding, observation and interview,
personas, storyboards, customer journey, stage-gate process
and project portfolio management. Skills developed and
tools gained in the class will be enduring and valuable
for consultants, financial managers, marketers, and anyone
else charged with leading a group in developing valuable
new information-based services.
ES 701 Wolverine Venture Fund
This course was launched at the University of Michigan
in Fall 1997, with a dual mission: to earn a venture rate
of return, and to support the educational missions of
the Ross School of Business in the area of private equity
investing and entrepreneurship. Students have substantial
input into decisions to invest in start-up ventures. This
course is designed to give students "hands-on"
experience in the entire process of venture investing,
including: sourcing applicants, initial analysis, due
diligence investment negotiation, and monitoring the portfolio
of investment. An external advisory board provides assistance
and input. Cross-listed with CSIB 701.
ES 702 Frankel Commercialization Fund
This course is provided for students interested in technology
commercialization, new business creation and venture capital.
The course combines class room learning with experience
managing a student run investment fund formed to accelerate
the rate of successful commercialization of ideas and
technology found at the University of Michigan. Students
will have an opportunity to evaluate new technologies,
meet with inventors and company founders, perform due
diligence on opportunity of interest, work with the inventors
to develop a value adding investment plan for the idea,
to prepare and obtain approval for a recommendation to
invest, and most importantly, to convince the inventor
to accept the investment team's investment proposal. Student
teams will seek guidance from and make their recommendations
to a Board of Advisors made up of successful business
people and industry experts.
ES 703 Social Venture Fund
Social Venture Fund --- This course will provide students with the education, tools, and techniques essential to valuing and financing venture investments that create sustainable value for both the investor firms and society at large. Students will engage in action-based learning of the entire process of social venture investing: sourcing applicant deals, initial screening analysis, due diligence, investment negotiation and monitoring of the investment portfolio. The key distinguishing feature of this course is that all core investment competencies will be developed in the context of creating sustainable social value. Students will develop a broad-based understanding of social and environmental valuation with the objective of measuring and optimizing the blended value of financial and social return of an enterprise.
ES 715 Innovative New Business Design
This synthesis-focused, project-based course integrates
elements of various business school and engineering courses
into a high-level process for determining how to capture
value from an innovation source—specifically a new
technology. Designing a new business from an innovation
source is the first step in creating a new business from
a technological discovery. This course is focused on the
design of the business: formulating a sound, detailed,
market-driven, value-capturing business concept from a
new technology. In this course the product offering (including
its sustainable differentiation), a specific target market,
and the company’s core business model will all be
specifically defined.
ES 720 Commercialization of Biomedicine
Commercialization of Biomedicine --- This interdisciplinary course introduces graduate students to the key issues faced by companies attempting to bring science and technology innovations in biomedical therapeutics, devices, and diagnostics to market. Because the details of doing this change, the course will present not just current practices but also the rationales behind those practices and more general, analytic frameworks that students will be able to use when specific industry conditions change. Issues include understanding and reaching biomedical markets, regulation, financing, risk, organizational configurations, and alliances. Students will understand the various ways commercialization is done and the reasons why it is done those ways.
Advisory Prerequisites: FIN 503, 513, 551, or FIN 591; and MKT 501, 503, or MKT 591; and STRATEGY 502, 601, or STRATEGY 591.
ES 730 Marketing for Entrepreneurs
Marketing for Entrepreneurs --- This course is aimed at students who expect to work as senior sales or marketing professionals in a venture backed start-up or private equity backed small to medium sized enterprise (SME) within the next five years. The course focuses on the issues of growing the sales of high-potential ventures. Typically, theses are ventures formed with the objective of either doubling sales for an existing business or building $20 million per year of a new business from zero in less than five years. The high-potential setting highlights the conflicts between the expectations of employees and investors and the constraints of cash and time. It is different from marketing as taught in other courses in that: 1) it focuses on the push for rapid growth in sales; 2) the senior sales and marketing person has major responsibility and decision scope; 3) it focuses solely on marketing in SMEs; 4) it presents informal marketing approaches because of time and cash pressure; 5) it involves both strategic and tactical decisions; and 6) the life cycle of the firm is in view from start-up to potential exit. Course Prerequisites: (FIN 503, 551 or 591) and (MKT 501, 503 or 591) and (MO 501, 503 or 593) and (STRATEGY 502, 591 or 601)
ES 750 Research Projects
Individual research projects, supervised by faculty, are
available to graduate business students in good academic
standing. To select a project, students should consult
the appropriate professor about the nature of the research
and the number of credit hours the work would garner.
Students earn one to three credit hours per project and
may elect only one research project in a term and no more
than three over the course of their program. No more than
six credit hours from research projects will count toward
degree requirements. Advisory Prerequisites: G.BUS.STU.
