Entrepreneurship   

This course is for entrepreneurial managers who are looking for tools and techniques to introduce exciting, innovative products or services to market quickly and informed by high-quality customer insights. It is applicable to a range of organizations from small-medium sized enterprises through to corporates, and across a range of industrial segments.

The problem this course helps address is the constant pressure managers face to be innovative and introduce novel products and services for their customers. However, many creative ideas get ‘stuck’ in the boardroom or are subject to intra-organizational tensions or group think. This course provides methodologies to break through these challenges.

We build on the widely known concept of design thinking but update it and apply it to advance business strategy and entrepreneurship. Over five weeks you will learn what ‘design strategy’ is, how it differs from traditional design thinking and business strategy, and how it can be used to improve existing products or services in your business, or introduce breakthrough ideas.

We will also provide an exclusive, deep-dive into the practical application and impact of these strategies in one of Australia’s newest, most innovative financial institutions, UBank, and the global re-insurance giant, Swiss Re. Through conversations with their Senior Executive Leadership Teams, including UBank’s CEO, we will explore how they have embedded innovation through design thinking. By the end of this course, you will have a set of tools to inform product design and development for your own start-up, or to extend the product roadmap of an established organization.

This course assists aspiring and active entrepreneurs in developing great ideas into great companies. With strong economies presenting rich opportunities for new venture creation, and challenging economic times presenting the necessity for many to make their own job, the need to develop the skills to develop and act on innovative business opportunities is increasingly vital.

Using proven content, methods, and models for new venture opportunity assessment and analysis, you will learn how to:

* Identify and analyze entrepreneurial opportunities;
* Enhance your entrepreneurial mindset;
* Improve your strategic decision-making; and
* Build innovative business models.

Our goal is to demystify the startup process, and to help you build the skills to identify and act on innovative opportunities now, and in the future.

With this course, students experience a sampling of the ideas and techniques explored in the University of Maryland's master's degree in technology entrepreneurship, an innovative, 100% online program. Learn more at http://mte.umd.edu/landing.

An entrepreneur is someone who is always on the lookout for problems that can be turned into opportunities and finds creative ways to leverage limited resources to reach their goals. In this course, learners will be introduced to the fundamental concepts, theories, and frameworks of entrepreneurship and learn how to apply them within the context of the world's largest market: China. Through cases, articles, and experiential learning, learners will gain expertise in how to identify and evaluate opportunities; interpret, analyze, and build financial models to enable high-growth ventures; practice living life as an entrepreneurial leader; and create a new product or service for the Chinese market.

This course will explore the earlier stages of the entrepreneurial venture process across four modules. The modules will examine the nature of growth and error in entrepreneurial settings and how to manage resources in those settings. In addition, the modules will explore the emergence of entrepreneurial opportunities, the formulation of ideas in relation to those opportunities, and how those opportunities and ideas influence entrepreneurial phenomena. Finally, the course will focus on how business concepts underlie compelling entrepreneurial missions that provide guidance to the evolution of a venture’s business model and future strategic planning.

You will be able to:

- Develop a foundational understanding of the entrepreneurial process
- Consider the relationship between growth and error
- Understand how particular opportunities influence entrepreneurial phenomenal

This course builds on previous concepts and outlines strategies and tactics for forming, financing, and launching a new venture. Topics to be addressed will include building the new venture’s initial management team, identifying and reaching out to early customers, developing financial plans, raising startup and initial growth financing, and preparing for and managing rapid growth.
You will be able to:
- Develop an understanding of what is required in a new venture
- Create a plan to identify and approach your first customers
- Build financial projections for the new venture
- Understand how to raise equity capital for the new venture
- Monitor the health and scalability of a new venture

How do you implement ideas?

This course provides practical proven tools for transforming an idea into a product or service that creates value for others. As students acquire these tools, they learn how to tell bad ideas from good, how to build a winning strategy, how to shape a unique value proposition, prepare a business plan, compare their innovation to existing solutions, build flexibility into their plan and determine when best to quit.

As a vital part of the course students conduct on-site interviews with entrepreneurs who have launched startups, and are eager to share their valuable insights with them.

Upon completing this course successfully, graduates will be able to:
1. Transform ideas into real products, services and processes, by validating the idea, testing it, and turning it into a growing, profitable and sustainable business.
2. Identify the major steps and requirements in order to estimate the potential of an innovative idea as the basis of an innovative project.
3. Reach creative solutions via an iteration of a virtually endless stream of world-changing ideas and strategies, integrating feedback, and learning from failures along the way.
4. Apply the 10 entrepreneurial tools in creating a business plan for a new innovative venture.
5. Apply methods and strategies learned from interviews with startup entrepreneurs and innovators.
6. Communicate and sell innovative ideas successfully.

This course, developed at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia and taught by top-ranked faculty, focuses on challenges faced by existing private businesses when they attempt to grow substantially.

This free online course is one of 10 courses available in the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women collection, designed for entrepreneurs ready to take their business to the next level.

In this course you will gain the skills that will help you to plan how to best grow your business in future. You will learn how to identify business opportunities, and select the one which is the most progressive and forward-looking, assessing its feasibility.

You will also be introduced to the Business Growth Plan (BGP), a strategic tool that will help you identify your business objectives and guide your business’s growth. If you choose to take all 10 free online courses, the BGP will be your key takeaway from Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women.

The 10,000 Women course collection offers a truly flexible online learning experience. You have the freedom to approach the program in any way that works for you – take any course, or combination of courses, to tailor your learning journey to your individual business growth needs. If you choose to take all 10 courses, you will explore all the key elements of your business and develop a thorough plan for your business’s growth.
Find out more about the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women collection in the FAQs.

In this course you will learn and practice techniques of user research and early UI design exploration. First, you will learn and practice several techniques for user research, including in-person research and survey and log-analysis techniques. Then, you will learn to analyze and deliver user research in forms that support UI design, including personas, use cases, tasks, and scenarios. Finally, you will learn and practice ideation techniques that start from user research and broadly generate potential design ideas.