Courses

First Year (Required Curriculum)

During the first year at HBS, all students pursue the same course of study called the Required Curriculum. By studying under a common curriculum, students build a solid, broad foundation of general management concepts and skills across all key disciplines, including entrepreneurial management.

Entrepreneurial managers transform opportunities into companies and institutions that make a difference in the world. In their successful “pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled,” they make decisions under conditions of profound uncertainty and do so while balancing great risks against potentially attractive rewards. Moreover, they operate without the benefit of well-defined processes for making such choices and with few resources. As a consequence, entrepreneurial companies offer an ideal platform for understanding the challenges facing a general manager.

Building on the foundation laid by other RC courses, The Entrepreneurial Manager (TEM) will provide students with an understanding of issues facing entrepreneurs and an exposure to the skills involved in addressing them. We will explore how executives should approach making critical decisions during the different phases of an entrepreneurial company's life. Starting from the vantage point of the individual , we will put ourselves in the shoes of decision makers ranging from technology entrepreneurs to venture capitalists, from real estate developers to inventors. TEM will give students the opportunity to hone their skills in identifying and testing business opportunities, decomposing complex business problems, determining what decisions the responsible business executive must make, and establishing a ‘burden of proof’ standard for making those decisions. We will also introduce a range of specific tools—including business model design, lean testing, and customer and channel analytics—that are particularly relevant to entrepreneurs, as well as introduce students to the fundamentals of entrepreneurial finance and governance. The course will provide insight as to how the interests of other important constituencies— employees, potential and actual investors, business partners, suppliers, and distribution channels—constrain and contribute to an entrepreneur’s ability to create value.

The Entrepreneurial Manager will examine how individuals convert knowledge, aspiration, and insight into action.

Second Year (Elective Curriculum)

During the second year students choose from a range of elective courses, enabling them to integrate the functional skills learned in the first year into an understanding of the firm as a total enterprise. There are a variety of entrepreneurship related elective courses to choose from.