The entrepreneurship curriculum at the University of Chicago was born out of Chicago Booth with the first course dating back to 1998. Today, the university offers a wide range of entrepreneurship courses, which pair the fundamentals of finance, economics, and strategy with innovative hands-on learning.
Course List: Autumn
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.
Learn MoreEntrepreneurial Finance and Private Equity
This course will use the case method to study entrepreneurial finance and, more broadly, private equity finance. The course is motivated by increases in both the supply of and demand for private equity.
Learn MoreEntrepreneurship for Science and Medicine
This is an introductory course in entrepreneurship for science and medicine offered to graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, researchers, and faculty who are working at the University of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory, and FermiLab. The course provides an introduction to the field of entrepreneurship, not only familiarizing participants with common topics and frameworks, but also introducing them to real-life entrepreneurs and investors. Given its audience, the course will have a special focus on entrepreneurship in scientific fields and how scientists can play a role in the commercialization of research and inventions from the lab. The goal of the course is to provide a greater understanding around what it takes to bring a research discovery or idea to market for a larger societal impact.
Learn MoreEntrepreneurial Selling
In the Entrepreneurial Selling course, you will learn how to acquire customers, use selling skills in different contexts, tell powerful stories, manage entrepreneurial sales processes, and us the key tools required for success in selling.
Learn MoreNew Product and Strategy Development Lab
This course complements Chicago Booth’s strong training in business theory by providing a problem-solving experience for a small but diverse group of students. The course accelerates the process by which students learn to manage themselves and others when developing solutions to real-world business problems.
Learn MoreNew Venture Strategy
Improving 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.
Learn MoreCommercializing Innovation: Tools to Research and Analyze Private Enterprises
This course will focus 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.
Learn MoreEntrepreneurial Discovery
In both start-up entrepreneurship and corporate intrapreneurship, pursuing wrong ideas is wasteful of precious time, resources, and energy while identifying the “right idea” to pursue is really hard. This hands-on course led by two industry-proven entrepreneurs demystifies Discovery, the starting phase of Booth’s D4 innovation process. Through active but practical instruction, this “fuzzy front-end” course provides impassioned innovators with the tools needed to quickly determine which of their ideas are worth further pursuit.
Learn MoreEntrepreneurial Internship Seminar
Participating students are able to network with other interns and earn academic credit for their internship. As part of the course requirements, each intern is required to write a case about an important issue faced over the summer by the student’s employer as well as an analysis or solution to the case. Depending on the quality and evaluation of the analyses, certain cases may be incorporated into the curriculum for future case study.
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