COURSE NUMBER: MBA295T.1B

COURSE TITLE: Entrepreneurial Strategy

UNITS OF CREDIT: 2 units

INSTRUCTOR: Abhishek Nagaraj

E-MAIL ADDRESS: nagaraj@berkeley.edu

MEETING DATES: Meets in Spring B, 3/14-5/7

CLASS WEBSITE: http://www.ent-strategy.org

VIDEO OVERVIEW: https://www.ent-strategy.org/intro-video/

PREREQUISITES: None

CLASS FORMAT: Mixture of lectures, case discussion, team projects and guest speakers.

REQUIRED READINGS: There is no specific textbook for this class. Required and suggested reading for each class will be included in the course materials.

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: Grades will be based on individual and team assignments and class participation.

CAREER FIELD: The class is designed to be particularly appropriate for those seeking to:
(a) Become a growth entrepreneur
(b) Work in a start-up company with influence on strategy development or implementation
(c) Have a career as an VC or other investment professional who has to evaluate start-up innovators (d) Practice as a management consultant whose practice focuses on innovation–driven firms or industry segments

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:
This course provides an integrated strategy framework for innovation-based entrepreneurs. The course is structured to provide a deep understanding of the core strategic choices facing start-up innovators, a synthetic framework for the development and implementation of entrepreneurial strategy in dynamic environments, and the ability to scale those ventures over time. A central theme of the course is that, to achieve competitive advantage, technology entrepreneurs must balance the process of experimentation and learning inherent to entrepreneurship with the selection and implementation of a strategy that establishes competitive advantage. The course identifies the key choices entrepreneurs make to take advantage of a novel opportunity and the logic of particular strategic commitments and positions that allow entrepreneurs to establish competitive advantage.

The course combines interactive lectures, case analyses, and engagement with start-ups.The course draws on a rapidly emerging body of research in entrepreneurial strategy that moves beyond the “one size fits all” approach to start-ups and instead focuses on the key choices that founders face as they start and scale their business. The cases and assignments offer an opportunity to integrate and apply the entrepreneurial strategy framework in a practical way, and draws from a diverse range of industries and settings.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:|
Abhishek Nagaraj is Assistant Professor at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. Nagaraj holds a MS/PhD in Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta and a BS in Computer Science from the College of Engineering, Pune.

Abhishek has been involved in entrepreneurship research, teaching and practice since 2008. He has founded an online news platform and a robotics association. He has been associated with teaching Entrepreneurial Strategy at MIT Sloan. Abhishek's research concerns innovation and entrepreneurship management, especially in digital markets. He has studied the role of copyright in the diffusion of information on Wikipedia and the design of policies to generate content and user engagement in online crowdsourcing platforms. His ongoing work looks at the impact of geospatial data, such as satellite imagery, on innovation in the mining industy. Abhishek has won numerous awards for his research including the Kauffman Fellowship, the Beyster Fellowship, the Wiley-Blackwell Dissertation Award and the MIT Energy Fellowship.

You can find out more about Prof. Nagaraj on his website (http://www.abhishekn.com) and he is also active on twitter @abhishekn