Syllabus

INFORMATION-CENTRIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP & STARTUP STRATEGIES
I290 (2 units)
Spring 2013
Thursdays, 9:00am-11:00am
South Hall 202

* * *
Week 1: Introduction
Week 2: IT ALL STARTS WITH AN OPPORTUNITY
Week 3: ENTRE IS THE MANTRA” – GETTING YOUR TEAM TOGETHER
Week 4: OVERVIEW: ENTREPRENEURIAL BUSINESS MODELS
Week 5: “UNFAIR ADVANTAGE” – HOW WILL YOU WIN?
Week 6: “CUSTOMERS: THE FASTEST PATH TO YOUR CASH REGISTER”
Week 9: GUEST SPEAKER: Kurt Collins
Week 10: YOUR SOCIAL LIFE IN 140 CHARACTERS OR LESS: Time To Pivot To A Higher Value Position?
Week 11: The Gamification of Everything: Game On or Game Over?
Week 12: GUEST SPEAKERS: Michael Cronan and Karin Hibma
Week 13: A startup’s journey: from A to B to R to C to __? vs. an incumbent’s dilemma and GUEST SPEAKER Chuck Teller
Week 14: Microsoft’s current “stuck”iness vs. Reis’ “lean innovation” recipe; closing reflections

* * *
Instructor:    
John Danner, Senior Fellow, The Lester Center for Entrepreneurship, Haas School of Business, UCBerkeley
email: danner@haas.berkeley.edu [please put “I290M” in the subject line to avoid my over eager spam filter]
Office hours: By appointment. (I live near campus, so – given parking challenges – sometimes it may be easier to meet there.)

Tutor:            
Course Description

Background: Every business depends on information — about customers, competitors, trends, performance, etc. Entire curricula have been focused on the technological, systems, strategic, and management challenges associated with that dependency. This course, however, looks at a different intersection between information and business. Specifically, it will explore how entrepreneurs across the world are developing ventures fundamentally centered on new and emerging information technologies and the business models and strategies they make possible. These include not only the Googles, Amazons, and Facebooks of the world, but also ventures like Comat and Samasource. In some cases, these are efforts on the proverbial cutting edge of technology; more often they involve creative application and/or integration of existing information technologies in innovative ways. Together, they comprise the dramatically expanding world of info-centric entrepreneurship [“ICE” in our parlance].

We will first examine the key elements of business models and the entrepreneurial process, before looking in more detail at a variety of ventures leveraging information-based technologies and strategies in an array of markets. Using of mix of case-study discussion, short lectures, and focused conversations with active entrepreneurs, this will be a highly interactive and collaborative course — not a sit-listen-take-notes type of class.

Expect to be actively involved in a series of in-class and outside assignments, both individual- and team-based, that will help you develop an understanding of how entrepreneurs are using information-centric technologies to create new markets and redefine old ones, and the lessons learned in the process. You may also explore your own ideas for new ventures along the way.

Course Design: This is the inaugural version of this course at the I School, so I intend it to be a mutually valuable work-in-progress for all of us. Although I usually teach entrepreneurship-related courses to MBAs at Haas, I don’t expect most of you to have that perspective on our topic this semester. And that, in turn, opens up some intriguing possibilities for designing our time together. For example, I’d like us to consider entrepreneurship through the personal stories of a wide variety of ICE startup venturers. I want all of us to learn more about the ever-changing ICE technology frontier itself, and will expect each of you to contribute to that mutual discovery expedition. We will anchor many of our discussions in specific cases that will reveal recurring challenges and choices faced by ICE players, and also give you a taste for that kind of learning. Finally, as you develop your own ICE venture ideas, we will use part of our class time as an ongoing clinic to help you understand some of the techniques entrepreneurs use to address positioning, marketing, financing, team and other strategically essential facets of their businesses.

Class Framework: Classes will consist of a mix of lectures, case-based discussions, guest speaker conversations and introductions by fellow students to emerging technologies. A typical class might open with a short presentation from one of your classmates regarding a technology that is changing the way start-ups operate, followed by a short lecture on the theme of the day. Themes will include technology, teams, business models, and other relevant topics. As appropriate, we will either proceed with an in-depth discussion of a case study or listen to and interact with a guest speaker from industry. Finally, we’ll wrap up the class with a group discussion designed to help you apply class concepts and cases to your own ideas.

“Skills” Component: During the semester, I hope to provide you an opportunity to see several new technologies and resources in action in the context of entrepreneurship and start-ups. We will consider the tools available to startups today, whether they are helping teams collaborate or to supporting the addition of hundreds of thousands of new users. In this component we’ll dig into the technologies that are reducing risks, eliminating costs and helping entrepreneurs execute.

Instructor(s)

John Danner, the lead instructor, is a Senior Fellow of The Lester Center for Entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, where he usually teaches the core MBA course on entrepreneurship, as well as other graduate courses on business model innovation and strategies for startups. He is Faculty Advisor to the Global Social Venture Competition, and launched UC’s campuswide undergraduate course on entrepreneurship and global poverty. He also teaches entrepreneurship in the Berkeley Columbia Executive MBA Program. He began his entrepreneurial career as an undergraduate at Harvard, appropriately enough (for this course) in a venture called IGS (Information Gathering Service); and has since been involved in startups of various types as entrepreneur, advisor and investor. In addition, he has worked as a management consultant, lawyer or senior executive in the private, nonprofit and public sectors in fields from education and healthcare to telecommunications and energy. A frequent speaker on innovation and entrepreneurship at conferences and seminars around the world, he is also senior moderator with the Aspen Institute’s executive and global leadership programs, as well as the Federal Executive Institute. For those of you are fans of TED, he’s also the guy who came up with the idea for TED University; and gave a mini-TED talk at last summer’s TEDGlobal event in Edinburgh. He received his JD, MPH and MAEd degrees from UC Berkeley.

Tutor Background

Customer Expectations

If you enroll in this course, you should expect to achieve the following objectives:

  • Develop a basic working familiarity of what entrepreneurship is and some of the tools and frameworks entrepreneurs use in creating ventures
  • Discover, and gain an appreciation for, a broad variety of existing and proposed ICE ventures and related business models in diverse markets
  • Improve your awareness of, and basic fluency with, emerging technologies in the ICE space that might be the foundation for promising new ventures addressing market challenges,
  • Get to know some of the individuals and organizations active in this arena
  • Experience some of the analytical, strategic and other challenges entrepreneurs face in designing new ICE ventures
  • Learn what it takes to critique and develop a new venture concept, and assemble a credible and convincing presentation of your analysis in a collaborative team environment

Instructor Expectations

I will assume you come to every class (unless excused in advance by Paul) prepared to discuss the day’s readings, engage in class dialogue about the topics du jour and hand in all assignments on time. We will review our policy on laptops in class but be forewarned, although this is a course about infotech-based ventures, I am not favorably disposed to laptops/tablets/cellphones/ PDAs/OEDs/etc. in a discussion-centric course like this and never allow them when we have guest speakers. So please leave your devices in your bag. If you have particular questions about assignments, readings or other course matters, I assume you will take the initiative and contact Paul or me.

We may have a few interesting guest speakers/entrepreneurs in our class from different fields. Assuming some of them may be willing to stay after class for lunch, I would be happy to invite a few interested students to join us for a more casual conversation. We’ll do that on a first-come, first-served basis with priority given to students who haven’t attended one of these prior lunch sessions.

I am a firm believer in the power of many minds collaboratively tackling an important and complex issue. Our topic this semester certainly deserves the best we can each bring to this course. Accordingly, I will expect students to take an active role in expanding our collective awareness of useful resources and infotech ventures that will strengthen this course for future colleagues. This is a very volatile domain we will be exploring, and I want all of us to benefit from the insights of each of us along the way. Most of all, I want you to understand the spirit with which I approach things.

Prerequisites & Enrollment

There are no prerequisites for this course other than a curiosity about its focus and a willingness to engage actively in class discussions and assignments. Students from across the campus are welcome. Space is limited, but if there is a waiting list of interested students, we will try to find a way to accommodate them.

If you are enrolled or interested in taking this class and have not already done so, please email me and cc Paul the following by midnight, Sunday, January 22:  a 1-page narrative synopsis of your background, including a brief explanation of why you are interested in this topic; and if you’ve had any direct entrepreneurial experience, please also attach a 1-paragraph summary of that as well. Feel free to attach a resume as well, but not in lieu of the narrative. Nothing fancy required, but please include “I290” in the subject line of your email so it doesn’t end up in our spam files.

Readings

I treat each week’s readings as context for our class, and do not necessarily intend to discuss each reading per se. Similarly, the questions listed for each week are suggestions of things for you to think about while doing the readings, but we will not necessarily consider them explicitly in class. In short, I’ll assume you’ve read all required selections and are prepared to reflect on what’s in them. Chapters 1-15 of the first book (half) and all of the second will be the focus of a multiple choice + written essay-type test during our 3rd class on 2/2.

Excerpts will be drawn from a few other core sources:

  • Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers, by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur: http://www.amazon.com/Business-Model-Generation-Visionaries-Challengers/dp/0470876417 [hereafter referred to as BMG]
  • New Value Creation: Entrepreneurship for the 21st Century, by Jeffrey A. Timmons and Stephen Spinelli, McGraw-Hill, 2011 [hereafter referred to as NVC]: http://www.amazon.com/New-Venture-Creation-Entrepreneurship-Century/dp/0078029104/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

NOTE:  The readings listed next to each week in this draft syllabus are illustrative; our final syllabus will identify all required and optional readings, with a targeted average required reading load of roughly 75-100 pages per week.

 

Grading

Grading will be based on a mix of individual and collaborative assignments, as follows:

  • 25%     Class Participation. We learn by listening, reading, thinking, doing AND speaking. This is not a class for just taking notes. You wouldn’t be a student at Cal if you didn’t have a questioning mind and pretty good ideas of your own. Your classmates and I expect to benefit from both during our semester together, as will any guest speaker. I love cold calling, too. And, by definition, this assumes 100% attendance – so out of sight is not out of mind. Roughly 15% will reflect your engagement in class discussion; the other 10% will focus on your contribution to our “Make Us Smart” agenda, e.g., your in-class introduction of significant new technologies and/or business models worth sharing and your extracurricular additions to our class resource list.
  • 20%     Required readings tests. There will be one written multiple choice + essay-style test on 2/2 (WEEK 3) that will cover one and a half books; and later periodic unannounced short multiple-choice quizzes covering the readings since the last quiz. Just to make sure we’re staying on track.
  • 10% Consultant Collaboration. We will have two team assignments during the semester. In addition to your participation on your own team, you will be assigned as a consultant/resource to assist another team in their work. Their evaluation of your effectiveness will comprise this portion of your grade. This should give you an opportunity to know at least four ventures/projects in greater depth: your two and your clients’ two.
  • 20%     Midcourse Presentation. This is a classwide team assignment, based on its choice of one of several challenges to be described later. These will require you to assess a market and its related ICE venture landscape, determine an appropriate strategy for entering that market and defending your position as your venture gains traction.
  • 25%     Final Class Presentation. This, too, will be a team assignment, albeit with different teammates. You will have your choice between developing a launch strategy for a venture idea of your own or figuring out a promising strategy for taking down one of the current giants in the ICE marketplace. Either way, your team will be responsible for preparing a 10-15 page paper articulating your strategy and its underlying analytical rationale, and presenting/defending that strategy in person during our final class session. Details to follow.

Week 1          ORIENTATION: DIGITAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

1.19.12

We’ll start with an overview of our course and the usual housekeeping logistics, before turning to the questions/issues you are interested in exploring. Then we’ll have a round of staccato introductions so we can better understand the keyboard of experiences we have to play with this semester. After developing a working definition of entrepreneurship and the major territories it occupies, we’ll identify the major questions all entrepreneurs must address in developing their ventures. These will provide a context for our future classes as we look at the expanding intersection between entrepreneurship and infotech.

Topics:

  • Course introduction: objectives, design, class format & deliverables
  • Student interests: What questions/issues do you want to explore in this course?
  • Class introductions: personal “elevator pitch”
  • Entrepreneurship: What is it? What makes it different?
  • The “world of e”: models and examples of entrepreneurship in different settings
  • Major questions every entrepreneur must address
  • Projects vs. ventures: What are the differences? 

Required Readings:

None this week.

Week 2        IT ALL STARTS WITH AN OPPORTUNITY

1.26.12

Entrepreneurs are good at both identifying and anticipating trends and changes in markets that can translate into profitable openings for their new ventures. In this class, we will discuss opportunity recognition and some of the factors entrepreneurs look for in finding them.  

Topics:

  • What is an “opportunity”?
  • What are its key characteristics?
  • How do you assess one?
  • What’s the difference between customer need and demand?
  • Which is better: find a niche or explore an ocean?

Required Readings:

  •  TLS, Chapters 1-4: “Start” section [58 pgs]
  • Case: “Binnj on the iPad” [24 pgs]
  • [don’t forget the FAW and CTC readings for next week’s exam]

Week 3          “ENTRE IS THE MANTRA” – GETTING YOUR TEAM TOGETHER

2.2.12

Slides – danner_teams_deck            

[NOTE: The class on 2/2/12 will also have a 1-hour multiple choice + essay-type exam on the FAW and CTC books]

Entrepreneurship is a team sport. Even the iconic Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Richard Bransons of the world needed teams to get started and keep going. Chances are, your venture will be no different – whether you’re the outfront founder or the behind-the-scenes player. This week, we’ll look in more detail into how to assemble, and adapt, the kinds of teams required for launch and beyond.

Required Readings:

  • TLS, Chapters 5-6: “Steer – Leap & Test,” [39 pgs]
  • Case: “Google, Inc.” [21 pgs]

Week 4          OVERVIEW: ENTREPRENEURIAL BUSINESS MODELS

2.9.12

A business model expresses the fundamental logic of a venture. Who sells what to whom? Why and how do they buy from you? What will make them buy more from you in the future? How will you make money? Answers to these questions contain the strategic building blocks of any business. A key skill of many entrepreneurs is the ability to not only identify new business models in markets, but also to make them agile enough to survive in changing circumstances – especially in unforgiving settings. This week, we will consider an array of existing and emerging ICE models, with parallels from developed economies as well. 

Topics:

  • What are the key elements of a business model?
  • How can entrepreneurs make their business models compellingly distinctive yet resilient?
  • What’s the value to focus on creating: $, time, skills, attitudes, other?
  • “Long Tail” opportunities and the importance of creative segmentation

Required Readings:

  • FAW, Chapters 16-18 (JOSHUA SCHACHTER, del.icio.us; MARK FLETCHER, ONElist/Bloglines; CRAIG NEWMARK, craigslist) [34 pgs]
  • Case: “Amazon.com: The Brink of Bankruptcy” [11 pgs]
Optional:

Week 5          “UNFAIR ADVANTAGE” – HOW WILL YOU WIN?

2.23.12          

We’ll look at this concept of distinctive/compelling competitive advantage, and some of the IP issues and strategies connected to it. 

Topics:

  • What do we mean by an “unfair advantage”?
  • What are examples of “unfair advantages”?
  • If you have one, how can you best leverage and defend it?
  • If you don’t have one, how might you build one?
  • What do you do if you can’t get one?

Required Readings:

  • FAW, Chapters 19-21 (CATERINA FAKE, Flickr; KAHLE WAIS, Internet Archive/Alexa Internet; CHARLES GESCHKE, Adobe Systems)
  • Case: “Groupon” [23 pgs]

Week 6 CUSTOMERS: THE FASTEST PATH TO YOUR CASH REGISTER
3.8.12

It’s very easy to spend most of your time as an entrepreneur imagining how wonderful your product/service will be for the customers to whom you intend to sell – “wait ‘til they see what we are going to do for them!” Your engineers can get fascinated by all the fabulous features they can add, as you both dream of the future about to unfold before your eyes. The only fly in that ointment is that until you actually go talk with, listen to and try to understand what real-life potential customers and users actually think about these ideas, you and your team are flying blind.

Topics:

  • How do you discover who your real target customers should be?
  • How can you find out what they’re thinking?
  • Which strategy is better: the Henry Ford/Steve Jobs’ approach of “show the customer what they need” or the more traditional “listen first, build later” approach?
  • How might you overcome the challenges posed in Crossing The Chasm?
  • What can you do to convert users into paying customers or at least revenue-attracting assets?
  • What kind of relationship should you establish with your different customer segments?

Required Readings:

  • FAW, Chapters 22-24 (ANN WINBLAD, Open Systems/Hummer Winblad; DAVID HEINEMEIER HANSSON, 37signals; PHILIP GREENSPUN, ArsDigita) [48 pgs]
  • Case: “Facebook” [38 pgs]

Week 9 GUEST SPEAKER: Kurt Collins
3.13.12

OK – not much of a mystery. Kurt Collins, Founder and CEO of enole.com, will be joining us for an in-progress discussion of his newest startup, what his team is trying to build and what he’s learned along the way.

Topics:

    • How to move from idea to launch – in bootstrap mode
    • Assembling a team you can trust to get the job(s) done
    • Maintaining the right balance between tenacious focus to achieve your strategic vision and improvised flexibility to pay the bills in the meantime
    • Persuading and positioning investors

Required Readings:

      • FAW, Chapters 31-33 (BOB DAVIS, Lycos; RON GRUNER, Alliant Computer Systems; JESSICA LIVINGSTON, Y Combinator) [35 pgs]

Week 10 Your Social Life In 140 Characters Or Less: Time To Pivot To A Higher Value Position?

3.22.12
This week, we’ll retrace our steps a bit to consider the Twitter case in the context of two other readings. As you know, there has been much controversy after Zynga’s lackluster IPO about whether and how other social network-based ventures can make it to the valuation land of Apple and Facebook. What’s the future for Twitter, and is it time to consider a Plan B or C “pivot” to something stronger?

Topics:

  • Types of “pivots” to consider if/when the time comes
  • How should entrepreneurs balance their users’ needs for social engagement with their venture’s need for paying customers?
  • What is Twitter’s busine$$ model?

Required Readings [NOTE: check latest syllabus for final list for this week]:

  • TLS, Chapter 8: “Pivot,” pgs 149-77 [28 pgs]
  • Article: “Social Strategies That Work,” Harvard Business Review Nov 11 [8 pgs]
  • Case: “Entrepreneurs at Twitter: Building a Brand, a Social Tool or a Tech Powerhouse?” [10 pgs]

Week 11        The Gamification of Everything: Game On or Game Over?

4.5.12

Turning play into profits has become a new Holy Grail for many info-centric entrepreneurs. From SimCity to FarmVille, ventures are designing new online experiences to entice us to spend time and money in their worlds. We’ll look at Zynga’s situation in the context of the overall games marketplace, and whether/how their experience fits with the Lean Startup’s “batching” strategy. 

Topics

  • What exactly is the gamification business model?
  • Are online games going to go the way of other mass fads or are they here to stay? Why?
  • Where are the next big opportunities in games?
  • What are the positive and negative ramifications of gamification?

Required Readings:

Week 12 GUEST SPEAKER: Michael Cronan and Karin Hibma

4.12.12

See Cronan’s website for a description of Michael and Karin’s work.
Required Readings:

  • None

Week 13: A startup’s journey: from A to B to R to C to __? vs. an incumbent’s dilemma and GUEST SPEAKER Chuck Teller

4.19.12

Two topics this week.

#1 – The Insurgent: Let’s say you want to start a venture using the web to get rid of junk mail, the real kind that clutters your mailbox and wastes trees. Using foundation funding to get started, you attract 1M+ subscribers to your service while spending virtually nothing on marketing. Along the way, you discover that many of your users are actually equally concerned about preserving their privacy as they are about decluttering their mail or saving the forests; and you need to figure out a way to monetize their loyalty to create a sustainable business. What do you do? We’ll hear from Chuck Teller, a serial entrepreneur in the middle of that journey.

#2 – The Incumbent: Why aren’t the best venture ideas of insurgent entrepreneurs just taken up by the incumbents, who have the resources, contacts and clout? We’ll look at Microsoft – is it yesterday’s hero or today’s sleeping giant or something else? 

Guest: Chuck Teller. Founder, Catalog Choice

Topics:

  • From inspiration to execution: how do you get started on the journey?
  • How do you adjust to surprises, setbacks and serendipity along the way?
  • What are the issues that compromise a well-respected incumbent’s ability to stay on top of markets, many of which it created or made possible itself?
  • Why hasn’t Microsoft been able to “get its act together” yet?
Required Readings:
  • TLS, Chapter 10: “Grow,” pgs 206-223 [17 pgs]
Optional:

Finally, create an account at www.catalogchoice.org/ and opt out of at least one mailing.

Week 14        Microsoft’s current “stuck”iness vs. Reis’ “lean innovation” recipe; closing reflections

With our case available, let’s look at Microsoft’s situation and why it has not (yet) been able to stay on top of several markets and solutions it helped pioneer. Does Reis offer a convincing alternative to the “innovator’s dilemma”? We’ll reserve the last portion of class for our final “make us smart” presentation before returning to your questions from the first class and discuss insights gained since then.

Topics

  • What are the issues that compromise a well-respected incumbent’s ability to stay on top of markets, many of which it created or made possible itself?
  • Why hasn’t Microsoft been able to “get its act together” yet?
  • If “innovation” is the essence of entrepreneurship and secret to sustainable growth in the trajectory from startup venture to large-scale enterprise, what do you need to do as an entrepreneur to keep it alive along the way?
  • What insights have you gained from the background smorgasbord of stories you’ve read in Founders At Work and the discussions we’ve had over the semester?

Required Readings: