Course Syllabus

Course Syllabus

Course Structure

The course involves lectures, class and case discussions, and a significant amount of group exercise work examining how the theory, methods and tools presented combine and relate to practice and problems in entrepreneurship.

You will be assigned into Entrepreneurship Teams for the first three months to experience and apply concepts and tools covered in the course. During the ‘Opportunity Exploration and Discovery’ session, each team will undertake an exercise to identify an opportunity. As a team you will engage in a number of activities during different course sessions where your opportunity is assessed, developed, tested, shaped, and further developed.  

For the final two terms, you will be working on your own or in teams to execute one, or two of several major works that can be selected from the following options: development of a business model for a product or service utilizing all facets of the Business Model Canvas; develop and write a case study based on a real-world situation that you have investigated; a literature review on a specific aspect of entrepreneurial writings, books or documentaries; active mentorship of a junior student preparing for the Dragon’s Lair; interview and report; or another area of personal interest approved by your instructor.

It is important to note that your learning is not dependent on you identifying and developing an ‘amazing’ opportunity. What is important is that you face, experience and reflect on the entrepreneurial issues that determine this journey. The individual assignment asks you to report on this journey and your learning.

In this course you are responsible for protecting your own intellectual property (IP). If you are worried about sharing IP in class or your assignments, then do not share it.

Course Elements

• Entrepreneurship: What is it? What are you?
  • Discovering your own mindset
  • Learning from others
• Understanding team dynamics and developing teams
• Understanding and teaching business models and the business model ‘Canvas’
• Discovering, exploring and developing opportunities
• Developing the business model canvas and pitches
• Change - Innovation, Experimenting and Learning
• Finalize business models and pitches
• Team pitches and wrap up
• Guest speakers
  • Throughout the course, we will be inviting guest speakers into our classes, to tell stories, describe their career path(s), provide insights, answer questions, act as mentors and generally assist you in your discovery and development of your entrepreneurial skills.
  • One of your tasks in this course will be connecting with speakers, preparing, facilitating, and managing speakers and coordinating gifts and thank-you cards
  • Possible speakers...
  • Possible dates 
    • Sept 17 12:30 to 1:20 Lunch and Learn
    • Sept 25 - 8:30 to 9:45 Late Start
    • Oct 9 - 8:30 to 9:45 Late Start
    • Oct 22 - 12:30 to 1:20 Lunch and Learn
    • Nov 13 - during x-block (11/12 study time)
    • Nov 19 - 12:30 to 1:20 Lunch and Learn

Demonstrating your understanding and growth

Case Studies

• Requiring presentations by groups and reflections  by individuals 

Readings 

• Consolidations, precies & reflections  
• Students will be expected to use different formats for reflections 
• Discussions - in class and through canvas

Consultations

Presentations

• Using a variety of media or methods 
• Providing lessons for Canvas Business Model (CBM)

Student Initiative (organizing a lesson, interview or speaker…)

Major Project 

• Fully executed business plan using CBM
• Literature review on a specific aspect of Entrepreneurship
• Create a fully developed Case Study on a business or enterprise targeting entrepreneurship and aimed at a grade 10 audience

Curricular Competencies

Students are expected to be able to do the following:

Applied Design

Understanding context

• Conduct user-centred research to understand opportunities and barriers

Defining

• Establish a point of view for a chosen design opportunity
•  Identify potential users, intended impact, and possible unintended negative consequences
•  Make decisions about premises and constraints that define the design space

Ideating

• Identify and analyze gaps to explore possibilities for innovation
• Take creative risks
• Generate ideas and enhance others’ ideas to create a range of possibilities, and prioritize the possibilities for prototyping
• Critically analyze how competing social, ethical, and sustainability factors impact designed solutions to meet global needs for preferred futures
• Work with users throughout the design process

Prototyping

•  Identify, critique, and use a variety of sources of inspiration and information
•  Choose an appropriate form and level of detail for prototyping
•  Plan procedures for prototyping multiple ideas
•  Analyze the design for the life cycle and evaluate its impacts
•  Construct prototypes, making changes to tools, materials, and procedures as needed
•  Record iterations of prototyping

Testing

• Obtain and evaluate critical feedback from multiple sources, both initially and over time
• Develop an appropriate test of the prototype
•  Based on feedback received and evaluated, make changes to product and/or service plan or processes as needed

Making

•  Identify tools, technologies, materials, processes, cost implications, and time needed for development and implementation
•  Use project management processes when working individually or collaboratively to coordinate or create processes or products
• Share progress to increase opportunities for feedback, collaboration, and, if applicable, marketing

Sharing

• Decide on how and with whom to share or promote their product or service, their creativity, and, if applicable, their intellectual property
•  Critically reflect on their design thinking and processes, and identify new design goals, including how they or others might build on their concept
• Critically evaluate their ability to work effectively, both individually and collaboratively

Applied Skills

• Evaluate safety issues for themselves, co-workers, and users in both physical and digital environments
• Identify and critically assess skills needed related to the project(s) or design interests, and develop specific plans to learn or refine skills over time
• Evaluate and apply a framework for problem solving

Applied Technologies

• Explore existing, new, and emerging tools, technologies, and systems and evaluate their suitability for design and production interests
• Evaluate impacts, including unintended negative consequences, of choices made about technology use
• Analyze the role and personal, interpersonal, social, and environmental impacts of technologies in societal change
• Examine how cultural beliefs, values, and ethical positions affect the development and use of technologies on a national and global level

Elaborations

• user-centred research: research done directly with potential users to understand how they do things and why, their physical and emotional needs, how they think about the world, and what is meaningful to them
• constraints: limiting factors, such as available technologies, expense, space, environmental impact
• sources of inspiration: may include personal experiences; First Peoples perspectives and knowledge; the natural environment and places,
• including the land, its natural resources, and analogous settings; people, including users, experts, and thought leaders
• information: may include professionals; First Nations, Métis, or Inuit community experts; secondary sources; collective pools of knowledge
• in communities and collaborative atmospheres both online and offline
• impacts: including social and environmental impacts of extraction and transportation of raw materials; manufacturing, packaging, and transportation to markets; servicing or providing replacement parts; expected usable lifetime; and reuse or recycling of component materials
• iterations: repetitions of a process with the aim of approaching a desired result
• sources: may include peers; users; First Nations, Métis, or Inuit community experts; other experts and professionals both online and offline
• appropriate test: includes evaluating the degree of authenticity required for the setting of the test, deciding on an appropriate type and number
• of trials, and collecting and compiling data
• project management processes: setting goals, planning, organizing, constructing, monitoring, and leading during execution
• Share: may include showing to others or use by others, giving away, or marketing and selling
• product or service: for example, a physical product, process, system, service, designed environment
• intellectual property: creations of the intellect such as works of art, inventions, discoveries, design ideas to which one has the legal rights
• of ownership
• safety issues: for example, viruses, phishing, privacy (digital); ergonomics, lifting, repetitive stress injuries (physical)

Content

Students are expected to know the following:

• recognition of entrepreneurial opportunities
• types of business ventures and social entrepreneurship
• factors that can promote innovation and entrepreneurial success, including networking, product/service knowledge, and market analysis
• characteristics of the global market and local economic trends
• components of starting a small business, including registration and financial considerations
• ways to protect intellectual property
• design for the life cycle
• interpersonal and presentation skills to promote products and/or services and to interact with clients
• emerging career options for young entrepreneurs
• ethics of cultural appropriation and plagiarism

Elaborations

• opportunities: identification of gaps where entrepreneurial opportunities might exist; experimentation with small-scale entrepreneurial ventures
• social entrepreneurship: focuses on developing and implementing solutions for social, cultural, and environmental challenges
• financial considerations may include:
  • budgeting
  • ways to access outside sources of funding and support for a venture
  • ways to control and manage cash flow and track expenses
  • taxation
  • ways to protect: for example, copyrights, trademarks, patents
• design for the life cycle: taking into account economic costs, and social and environmental impacts of the product, from the extraction of raw materials to eventual reuse or recycling of component materials
• interpersonal and presentation skills: for example, professional communications, collaboration, follow-ups, and courtesies; technological or visual supports to accompany marketing or demonstrations at conferences 
• cultural appropriation: use of a cultural motif, theme, “voice,” image, knowledge, story, song, or drama, shared without permission or without appropriate context or in a way that may misrepresent the real experience of the people from whose culture it is drawn