Commercial Ideation

INTD 325

Commercial Ideation is an upper-level undergraduate course in entrepreneurship. Students enrolled in this course will be divided into teams to generate business ideas within six categories: energy/sustainability, advanced and bio technologies, software/IT, products, services, and social entrepreneurship.  They will be looking for business ideas to analyze and possibly pursue as new start-ups companies.  Students will canvas the campus to solicit ideas from faculty, staff, and peers, and also participate in a Pitch Fest (think Shark Tank) during Family Weekend to solicit ideas from parents and alumni.  Once they have a portfolio of ideas, they will then create a filtering process to sort out the more promising opportunities, evaluating them based upon technical merit, business challenges, early market indicators, and the input of industry experts.

The semester concludes with each team selecting their best idea to move forward into the spring semester’s Idea2Venture class, where the idea will be further developed into a business plan and investor presentation.

To download a course flyer, click here.