Applied Entrepreneurship: Scaling a Business for Success

Offered By: University System of Maryland via edX

Course Description

Overview

In this Professional Certificate program, you will learn the skills to assess your business model and plan for growth and sustainability. The biggest breakthroughs in scaling businesses have come from innovations in business models.

Is your business ready for the next level? Experienced entrepreneurs will offer you feedback about your plan to improve your business model which could transform your company!

In these courses you will learn to solidify the basics and prepare for scaling your existing business.

You will answer some of the following questions:

Can you tweak your offering to improve your value proposition to your customer?
Do you have the right market fit?
Which channels will provide the biggest ROI?
Have you prepared to add resources or new processes to scale?
What innovations can you create or exist to evolve your business model and business?
Is there a key area that can be modified, scaled or automated to improve your efficiencies and grow your business?
Are you utilizing social media well?
Should you be outsourcing any functions/processes in the business?
Do you have the right mindset to scale your business?

Our course model is set up for your success. You will be challenged to think about where you want to go, what turning points await you, and how to utilize resources to accelerate your plans.

Starting a business is not always the hard part - it's sustaining the business with a growth mindset and seeing opportunities to accelerate growth.

This program will provide you with the tools to assess your business model, identify opportunities for innovation and evolution, create a plan and put it into action.

By earning the Applied Entrepreneurship Professional Certificate, you will have created a viable plan to evolve your business into a thriving venture.

Learn from two top professors in the field:

Mark Grovic, J.D., B.A.
Senior Advisor to University of Maryland Global Campus, Professor and Venture Capitalist in Residence at the R.H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, Co-founder of New Markets Venture Partners, Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), University of California, Berkeley; Juris Doctor (J.D.), Georgetown University Law Center; Private Equity and Venture Capital Executive Program, Harvard Business School

Michele K. Masterfano, DBA
Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland Global Campus, DBA in Marketing from Argosy University Sarasota, M.S. in Management Science from Lehigh University, B.A. in Liberal Arts from Pennsylvania State University. Seminar in Entrepreneurship Education, Babson College.

Syllabus

Courses under this program:
Course 1: Applied Entrepreneurship 1: Design Thinking for Business Acceleration

This course is for entrepreneurs who already have a small business and who want to accelerate that business for rapid growth. Learn techniques for innovating fresh ideas using design thinking.

Course 2: Applied Entrepreneurship 2: Acceleration Plan Development and Evaluation

This course guides you through a step-by-step process to create an acceleration plan to grow your business, building on insights from Applied Entrepreneurship Course 1. Eligible learners can choose to participate in an acceleration plan competition, too.

Courses

0 reviews
6 weeks, 2-3 hours a week, 2-3 hours a week
View details

Growing a small business takes work and vision. It takes innovation, brainstorming, iteration, and advice. In this course we introduce the concept of design thinking and a tool called the Business Model Canvas to help you accelerate your business. You’ll learn the nine components of the Business Model Canvas as well as how to identify the most relevant components to iterate through brainstorming with a variety of stakeholders in your business—your current customers, your potential customers, and advisors of your choosing. You will work through your own Business Model Canvas and present your acceleration plan at the end of this course.

This course is introduced weekly by a venture capital investor with decades of experience working with entrepreneurs and is taught by someone who has written business plans and taught entrepreneurs business planning at several universities.

You will benefit from this course if you have a micro or small business you wish to grow, or a growing business that you need to put more structure around so that you can continue to grow in a managed way.
0 reviews
6 weeks, 2-3 hours a week, 2-3 hours a week
View details
Applied Entrepreneurship II is a follow-on course from Applied Entrepreneurship I. You’ll dive even deeper into developing a plan to accelerate your business, doing some research to pull together facts and figures to develop a more complete acceleration plan to help you understand the more intricate details of how to iterate certain parts of your business model togrow your business. In this course you will:
- Create an outline of your acceleration plan:
- Define and size your market based upon your new view
- Develop and implement a market research plan
- More fully understand what marketing entails
- Learn more about adding to your entrepreneurial team and how to lead it effectively
- Develop a detailed financial plan for your business and, if needed, how to obtain outside financing
You can then enter an exciting competition where you could win a cash prize that you can use to help grow your business, presenting to a panel of judges who will not only determine winners, but will also provide you with guidance for moving forward.

Taught by

Mark Grovic, JD and Michele K. Masterfano, DBA