We all hear about those who win “The Business Lottery”: VC funding, big acquisitions, prestigious grants, best-sellers, etcetera. Is it healthy for the rest of us to be aiming for these rewards when planning our own business models? What are the alternatives? We will publicize small, local businesses that are on their way to a big impact. Local entrepreneurs will present their powerful case studies and reflect on how they are able to do what they love full-time. The class will examine how emerging technologies enable new business models, spur new business types, and allow for personal fulfillment.

Guest lecturers will provide the guiding business and personal philosophies and reveal the practical and numerical details around their management of people, services, and finances (so often glossed over in business and business education). In addition, each guest lecturer will bring a concrete problem or project from their own business, to challenge participants and gather productive, useful, and creative responses. Class lecturers will periodically facilitate open brainstorming: new business models, new and social media best-practices, imagining sustainability solutions around participants’ own projects, and so forth. Finally, class lecturers will facilitate traditional negotiations, management, and group-work learning games such as the red-green game and others. 

 

For information on course registration please contact Vanessa Marcoux at vmarcoux@mit.edu.