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Class times: Mondays, 4:00 – 5:30 pm
Location: Andersen Auditorium, Haas F295
Professor: Jennifer Walske
TAs: Reeta Banerjee, Aditya Mahesh
Office hours:
Mondays 4 – 5:30 p.m.
Andersen Auditorium, Haas F295
August 30 – November 29
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This is a one-unit course offered jointly by the College of Letters and Sciences and the Haas School of Business. From a scholarly view, Josef Schumpeter (1934) defines entrepreneurial profit as a result of using “unique combinations” or product or services. Howards Stevenson (1985) defines entrepreneurship as the pursuit of opportunities beyond the resources under one’s control. In this course, through a combination of readings and guest speakers, our goal is to have you create your own, personalized definition of entrepreneurship. We also want to challenge you to think about what entrepreneurship may mean towards your major/minor and post-collegiate career pursuits.
• Dr. Bob Epstein, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Sybase (Bio and video)
• John Scharffenberger, co-founder, Scharffen Berger Chocolate (Video)
• Ori Sasson, co-founder, Scopus Technology (Bio and video)
• Fred Reid, president, Flexjet, co-founder, Virgin America
• Myra Goodman, co-founder, Earthbound Farm
• Dr. Jeffrey Drezner, CEO & founder, Clinical Care Options
• Mitchell Kertzman, managing director, Hummer Winblad
• Jeff Heller, co-founder, FreeWheel
Workload: This class is a pass/fail course. In order to pass this class, you are expected to attend class (attendance is taken through i-clickers – buy, register and bring your i-clicker to the first day of class) and comment on each class through bSpace forum discussions. You will also identify a guest speaker and join a WIKI on that speaker, to ensure that you and the other students jointly craft and ask questions for his or her speaking day. Instead of a midterm, you and a co-author will submit a two-page paper discussing an interview with an entrepreneur.
Instructor
Jennifer Walske is a lecturer within the Haas School of Business. She is researching emergent venture capital firms and how syndication patterns affect portfolio firm success. She has presented her research at numerous conferences, including the Babson College Research Conference, the Academy of Management, and the Max Planck Institute of Economics. Walske has also created and taught entrepreneurship courses at both Babson College and Boston University’s School of Management.
Prior to her career in academia, Walske founded Myriad Investments LLC, an early stage venture capital firm, and remains a managing director there. Previously, she was a nationally ranked software analyst by Institutional All American, and a regular guest commentator on both CNN and CNBC. She also held various marketing and sales positions within the design automation and telecommunications industries. She has served on both non-profit and for-profit board of directors.
