About the New Ventures Cluster

Total number of credits in this cluster: 9 or 10

The New Ventures Cluster is designed to help students develop the skills and ways of thinking required to create, develop, innovate, and manage entrepreneurial ventures. Students learn about acquiring and balancing limited resources, changing venture direction quickly, building an entrepreneurial team, managing intellectual property, and creating new opportunities and markets. This cluster develops a wide range of managerial skills not usually demanded of one person within a larger organization, such as:

  • Acquiring and balancing limited resources
  • Changing direction quickly
  • Building a coherent team
  • Managing intellectual property
  • Creating new markets

The number of credits in this cluster depends on the selection of courses in the area of business law; see list of courses below.

Students who complete this cluster develop skills and knowledge in fourteen areas:

  • Opportunity recognition
  • New product development
  • Innovative thinking
  • Tolerance for ambiguity
  • Resource acquisition
  • Entrepreneurs and ethical leadership
  • Entrepreneurial management
  • Entrepreneurial finance
  • Effective teamwork
  • Entrepreneurial marketing
  • Entrepreneurial and innovation strategy
  • Technology commercialization
  • Intellectual property management
  • Business law

Preferred Sequence of Courses for the New Ventures Cluster

9 or 10 credit New Ventures Cluster
Core Courses #1 and #2 Credits Semester
MGMT/ENTR 215 Entrepreneurial Mindset 3 1-5
ENGR/ENTR 310 Entrepreneurial Leadership 3 3-6
Followed by...
New Ventures Cluster (9 credits) Credits Semester
Choose 9 or 10 credits from the list of cluster courses. 9-10  
Followed by...
Core Course #3 Credits Semester
MGMT/IST/ENGR 425 New Venture Creation 3 4-8

Students interested in the New Ventures Cluster should seek advising from the New Ventures cluster director early in your academic career to plan a feasible program of coursework. Some courses in this cluster have prerequisites and/or may not be offered every semester.

To meet the prerequisite requirement for MGMT/IST/ENGR 425, you must take:

  • (ECON 102 or ECON 104 or ECON 14 or MGMT 215; an ECON course is not required for the ENTI minor) and (CAS 100 or CAS 137T or EMSC 100S)

New Ventures Course Options

In addition to taking the three required ENTI core courses (215, 310, and 425), students must take three cluster-specific courses from this list (with a minimum of 3 credits of 400 level coursework *):

* non Smeal/Business students need to electronically request waivers for any MGMT 301 pre-requisites

In addition to the above list, the BA 241/BA 242 course pairing and three law-related courses are options for the New Ventures Cluster. Students may only take one of the following courses to count towards the three required for this specific cluster: