List of Concentrations

Entrepreneurship

Whether you are starting a company, launching a new division in an established organization, or seeking to invest in new ventures, entrepreneurial skills are crucial to identifying and evaluating the factors that will make your undertaking a success. As organizations become leaner, more global, and more resource-constrained, the need to be flexible and adapt quickly to change is increasingly important across all business segments.

Chicago Booth's leading-edge entrepreneurship curriculum integrates all business areas including marketing, finance, operations, and strategy, and takes students beyond the classroom, allowing them to test themselves in real-world settings. Through courses, experiential learning, labs, and competitions, students get the practical tools and experiences needed to start, finance, and manage their own business, or to embark into a career in private equity. No matter your career path, you will benefit from entrepreneurial skills such as prioritizing resources, critical evaluation of new business or growth opportunities, building and motivating a team, understanding the customer, accessing capital, and assuring profitable growth.

COCURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
COURSE SAMPLING
FACULTY SAMPLING
POLSKY CENTER

COCURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
In addition to classroom learning, you'll have the chance to explore real-world operations in numerous ways that also allow you to build new skills, relationships, and networks. These include:

Private Equity, Entrepreneurial Ventures, and Venture Capital Club (PEVC)

PEVC provides students interested in the VC, high-tech, and biotech industries a forum to share experiences and exchange information. The club offers industry leaders, faculty, and alumni opportunities to present information about the industry.

New Venture Challenge

Among the nation's premiere business plan competitions, the New Venture Challenge has helped launch more than 60 companies, which have gone on to raise more than $125 million to date.

Midwest Energy Forum

Hosted annually by the Polsky Center, The Forum brings together researchers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and others interested in green technology to learn about exciting developments within the renewable technology sector.

Venture Capital and Investment Competition

Teams act as venture capitalists evaluating promising start-up companies and present their investment decision to a panel of entrepreneurs. Chicago Booth won first place in the 2010 international competition.

COURSE SAMPLING
You'll have the option of taking courses that address your individual career choices, such as:

Entrepreneurial Finance and Private Equity

Using case studies, you will explore private equity from a number of perspectives, beginning with the entrepreneur/issuer, moving to the private equity - venture capital and leveraged buyout - partnerships, and finishing with investors in private equity partnerships.

New Venture Strategy

Improve your ability to assess the attractiveness of a new venture, anticipate the problems likely to be encountered as the business evolves, and predict its success or failure is the focus of this class. You will learn a set of qualitative models into which all entrepreneurial companies can be categorized.

Building the New Venture

Through class lectures, "game" assignments and real-world cases, you will learn how to raise initial seed funding, compensate for limited human and financial resources, establish initial brand values and positioning, leverage a strong niche position, determine appropriate sourcing and sales channels, and develop execution plans in sales, marketing, product development, and operations.

Special Topics in Entrepreneurship: Small Seminar in Developing a Business Plan

Students who advance to the second round of the New Venture Challenge develop their ideas into full business plans in this course. Venture capitalists, private investors, and entrepreneurs will help critique and improve the plans during presentations. Meetings also will focus on presentation skills, financial modeling, and legal considerations in a new venture.

Commercializing Innovation

This course focuses on the strategy and tactics of forming, acquiring, and growing new ventures, i.e., increasing shareholder value for business ventures funded with private equity. It is designed to aid those who are considering being part of an entrepreneurial project or evaluating such enterprises from the position of a public investor, private investor, or any stakeholder serving these emerging companies. The course will consider ventures representing broad sectors of the economy, including retail (both traditional and online), health care, telecommunications, consumer services, and businesses enhanced by the internet.

FACULTY SAMPLING
You'll study with professors who conduct groundbreaking research, collaborate with the entrepreneurial and private equity communities, and bring their own entrepreneurial experiences into the classroom.

	Linda Darragh, a coach for the New Venture Challenge, teaches the New Venture Lab and the Social Venture Enterprise Lab.		Ellen A. Rudnick, who spent 25 years in business management and entrepreneurial activities, was primarily engaged in the health care and information services industries prior to joining the Chicago Booth faculty. Both her governance activities and start-up interests help her to bridge the gap in the classroom between the theoretical and the real world.
	Waverly Deutsch, who won the Innovative Pedagogy for Entrepreneurship Education award from the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, serves on the board of the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center and Chicago Community Ventures.		Ira Weiss, who specializes in accounting topics, teaches advanced MBA courses in both tax strategy and entrepeneurship. He also is the faculty director of Hyde Park Angels, an angel investing group affiliated with the Polsky Center.
	Steven Neil Kaplan, who was named one of Businessweek's top 12 business teachers in the country, has served on the boards of Illinois Venture Capital Association and Morningstar. He is widely published in academic journals and often quoted for his expertise in publications like the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.		Craig Wortmann, who brings 20 years of experience to the classroom, teaches sales and marketing strategy in an entrepreneurship selling course. He currently serves as CEO of Experience, a firm that helps companies build their sales and marketing engine.
	Scott F. Meadow, a general partner in private equity for more than 25 years, has founded such projects as Sports Authority and Sunrise Assisted Living.		Luigi Zingales, a faculty member since 1992, is coauthor with Raghuram G. Rajan of Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists. The book received acclaim from the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.

The Polsky Center for Entrepeneurship is a key component of entrepreneurship, private equity, and venture capital activities at Chicago Booth. Established in 1998 with support from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the center was endowed in 2002 by Michael Polsky, '87, founder, president, and CEO of Chicago-based alternative energy company Invenergy LLC.

The center works to build relationships between Booth and the local entrepreneurial community. By sponsoring competitions and conferences, the center helps foster understanding about the entrepreneurship world and supports development of new and small businesses by providing resources to students and alumni.

As part of its commitment to teaching entrepreneurship skills at Booth, the Polsky Center provides students with hands-on, experiential learning opportunities and connections to the global Booth network of institutional investors, venture capitalists, angel investors, and portfolio companies.