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
| Core Courses #1 and #2 | Credits | Semester |
|---|---|---|
| MGMT/ENTR 215 Entrepreneurial Mindset | 3 | 1-5 |
| ENGR/ENTR 310 Entrepreneurial Leadership | 3 | 3-6 |
| New Ventures Cluster (9 credits) | Credits | Semester |
|---|---|---|
| Choose 9 or 10 credits from the list of cluster courses. | 9-10 |
| 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 *):
- MGMT 365 Social Entrepreneurship
- MGMT 426 Invention Commercialization
- MGMT 427 Managing an Entrepreneurial Start-Up Company or MGMT 427W Managing an Entrepreneurial Start-Up Company
- MGMT 451 Business, Ethics and Society or MGMT 451W Business, Ethics, and Society
- MGMT 453 Creativity and Innovation
- BA 250 Small Business Management - (Course not currently offered at University Park)
- BA 322 Negotiation Skills for Business Professionals - (Course not currently offered at University Park)
* 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:
- BA 241 Legal Environment of Business and B A 242 Social and Ethical Environment of Business
- BA 243 Social, Legal, and Ethical Environment of Business
- B LAW 243 Social, Legal, and Ethical Environment of Business; non-Smeal students only
- B LAW 341 Business Law I: Introduction to Contracts, Liability Issues, and Intellectual Property
