COURSE NUMBER: EWMBA295A-11

COURSE TITLE: Entrepreneurship

UNITS OF CREDIT: 3 Units

INSTRUCTOR: David Charron

E-MAIL ADDRESS: david.charron@berkeley.edu

PREREQUISITES: None

CLASS FORMAT: Mixture of cases, lectures and guest speaker

REQUIRED READINGS: The course has no text book. It will rely on readings and other materials available on study.net.

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: This is a comprehensive course focused on entrepreneurship and innovation.  Grades will be based on participation, a mid-term exam, a final project and responses to questions posted to bcourses.

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:
Entrepreneurship teaches how to identify and validate opportunities and to design and build new ventures. The cases and our discussions will focus on the entrepreneur who, often when confronting significant uncertainty, must make and implement a set of complex decisions that modify the potential outcome of the firm. You will have the opportunity to learn how it feels to be an entrepreneur during the class discussions and your work. The majority of out-of-class work will be careful preparation of the assigned case studies and the creation of a final project of your choice. In addition, you will be asked to participate in a set of negotiations, including the provisions in a venture capital term sheet, a founders’ equity sharing agreement, and other specific situations faced by entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs have a bias to take action, and this course is intended to help you develop this attitude.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES: 
David Charron is a member of the professional faculty of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, joining in 2003.  He is a Senior Fellow of the Lester Center, the Haas School’s entrepreneurship program.  Mr. Charron has held several leadership positions at Haas, including Executive Director of the Berkeley Innovative Leadership Development Initiative (BILD) and Executive Director of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation program.  At Haas, Mr. Charron teaches many MBA level courses including Business Model Innovation and Entrepreneurial Strategy, Case Studies in Entrepreneurship, Workshop for Startups and others.  He is also active in executive education with the Venture Capital Executive Program, Bio-entrepreneurship and several innovation and leadership programs.  Mr. Charron started UC Berkeley’s NSF I-Corps program as Faculty Lead and continues to teach scientists customer development skills using the lean Launchpad method.

Mr. Charron is an entrepreneur, having been a founder of Scientific Learning Corporation, the first successful neuroplasticity company.  He has also started several other ventures and consults to startups, inventors and entrepreneurs.  He has been an angel investor in several companies and is on the board of Impact Carbon, a non-profit developing carbon credit projects. He has worked in and studied the field of technology commercialization and entrepreneurship for 25 years. Mr. Charron’s experience in this field has been at corporations such as Xerox PARC, academic institutions including MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley and UCSF, and the national labs such as LBNL, LLNL and Sandia. He holds a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from UC Berkeley.