The entrepreneurship education curriculum builds on five areas of study: two foundation areas, Theory and Practice, and three distributed areas of study, the Entrepreneurial Skill Set, In-Company Action Learning, and Industry Focus. This tool shows how the classes and other entrepreneurial activities, such as the Tech Treks undertaken by the MIT Sloan MBA students or the club activities, like the MIT $100K or the MIT VCPE club conference fall into these five study areas. The image to the right provides a quick map of the curriculum organization.
Each tab below corresponds to one of the five areas. The classes listed under each tab address that learning area. For a full listing of all classes, you can also go to the Full Course List page.
E&I track students and other MBA students should confirm with their advisors on the whether any class will meet their degree requirements and also whether you have met any pre- or co-requisites for the class.
All other MIT or cross-registered students can check with their advisor or get permission from the instructor to register for any class with pre- or co-requisites they have not met.
Explores a wide range of strategic problems, focusing particularly on the sources of competitive advantage and the interaction between industry structure and organizational capabilities. Introduces a wide variety of modern strategy frameworks and methodologies. Builds upon and integrates material from core topics, such as economics and organizational processes.
Provides a strategic management framework for the management of entrepreneurial firms. Develops a set of powerful conceptual frameworks that allow entrepreneurs to evaluate and implement key strategic choices: the selection of novel technological and market opportunities, the organization and funding of early-stage ventures, and the development of a commercialization path. Emphasizes the dynamic nature of entrepreneurship; highlights the role of strategy in the management of uncertainty, and innovation in periods of industry disruption. Briefly considers the role of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs in economic growth.
Considers the challenges and opportunities involved in managing technology alliances and issues surrounding entrepreneurship, venturing, and competitions inside large organizations. Also focuses on issues concerning organizational structure and incentives for scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs.
Innovation teams of science, engineering, and management students evaluate the commercial feasibility of research generated by grants to School of Engineering faculty by the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation.
Covers the process of identifying and quantifying market opportunities, then conceptualizing, planning, and starting a new, technology-based enterprise.
Undergraduate students innovate, implement, and communicate designs that are practical, successful, elegant, interactive, robust, and holistic. Focus on project scope, and balancing real-world constraints against the limitations of technology and human cognition. Provides instruction in a computer markup language.
Strategic and organizational issues in the development of new technologies and new business areas for existing firms.
Students work in teams to develop a feasibility plan for a social venture (either a for profit or nonprofit).
Practical and tactical ins and outs of how to sell technical products to a sophisticated marketplace.
Focuses on the strategy as well as the tactics involved in negotiating and building effective, long-term relationships with investors, including venture capitalists and angels.
Explores key organizational decisions that have far-reaching consequences for founders and their ventures.
One of three alternative courses (15.615, 15.616, and 15.617) each designed to provide managers with the solid foundation in business law needed to exercise judgment and leadership when confronting a broad range of complex law-sensitive issues.
This course is designed to provide entrepreneurs, managers, and researchers with the understanding of law needed to exercise good judgment when confronting those issues, and to avoid the most common pitfalls.
Covers modern tools and methods for product design and development.
This course, primarily discussion based, provides a framework for understanding pricing strategies and tactics. Topics covered include pricing in competitive markets, estimating demand, price discrimination, the role of price cues, anticipating competitive responses, pricing in business to business markets, and pricing of new products. Lectures and cases are the primary modes of learning.
Examines the elements of entrepreneurial finance, focusing on technology-based start-up ventures, and the early stages of company development.
Led by Brian Halligan, Elaine Chen, and Catherine Tucker, this course is for students who want to start a company or join a startup.
Enables teams of students to work with the top management of global start-ups and gain experience in starting and running a new enterprise outside the United States.
Teams of science, engineering, and management students participate actively one day a week on-site with the top management of high tech start-ups in order to gain experience in starting and running a new venture.
Focuses on evolving a product from proof-of-concept to beta prototype: Includes team building, project planning, budgeting, resource planning; models for scaling, tolerancing and reliability, patents, business planning.
Subject helps medical and graduate students to develop an understanding of the limitations of current medical technology and the process of creating and transferring new medical technology from research into actual use (commercialization). Topics include pharmaceuticals, drug delivery, and medical devices. In a seminar setting, students interact with biomedical scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs directly involved in creating new companies based on future technologies. Students may find this subject helpful in evaluating possible theses. Open to advanced undergraduates with permission of instructor.
Explains the role of the entrepreneur in the built environment using case studies to outline different steps in developing real estate, construction, architectural and related enterprises. Emphasizes strategic marketing and implementation of the plan in the development of these businesses. Addresses the progression of an idea, from an opportunity to a sustainable business. Guest lectures from entrepreneurs in the built environment outline the various entrepreneurial paths and characteristics they took to success. Team project consists of identifying an idea/opportunity and plan for developing a sustainable company.
Special seminar focusing on the challenges of envisioning, planning, and building startups that are commercializing innovations from neuroscience and the blossoming domain of neuroengineering. Topics include neuroimaging and diagnostics, psychophysiology, rehab feedback, affective computing, neurotherapeutics, surgical tools, neuropharmaceuticals, deep brain stimulation, prosthetics and neurobionics, artificial senses, nerve regeneration, and more. Each class is devoted to a specific topic area. The first hour covers the topic in survey form. The second hour is dedicated to a live case study of a specific organization. A broad spectrum of issues, from the deeply technical through market opportunity, is explored in each class.
Uses a seminar format to discuss the business of software (products and services) and software-based digital platforms.
Surveys key strategic decisions faced by managers, investors and scientists at each stage in the value chain of the life science industry.
Project-based subject focusing on energy sector companies.
Seminar on founding, financing, and building entrepreneurial ventures in developing nations. Challenges students to craft enduring and economically viable solutions to the problems faced by these countries.
Seminar surveys internal and external entrepreneurship, based on Media Lab technologies, to increase understanding of how digital innovations grow into societal change.
Linked Data Ventures is a graduate-level class that combines both practitioner perspectives and practical hands-on experience with Semantic Web technologies.
Practical introduction to the process of designing and marketing new products. Covers the major phases of product development: opportunity identification (customer input, generating ideas, market definition), product design and positioning, pre-market testing and forecasting, launch marketing, and managing the life cycle.
Provides frameworks for understanding the structure and dynamics of the energy sector and the strategic opportunities available within it.
Seminars focused on the development of professional skills. Each term focuses on a different topic, resulting in a repeating cycle that covers medical ethics, responsible conduct of research, written and oral technical communication, and translational issues. Includes guest lectures, case studies, interactive small group discussions, and role-playing simulations.