15.373J / 2.912J / 3.085J
Venture Engineering
This course provides an integrated approach to the development and growth of new innovative ventures. The course is intended for MIT undergraduates who seek to leverage their engineering and science background through innovation-driven entrepreneurship.
A central theme of the course is that innovation-driven entrepreneurs must make a set of interdependent choices under conditions of high uncertainty, and thus venture engineering involves reducing uncertainty through a structured process of experimental learning and staged commitments.
The course is structured to provide deep understanding of the core technical, customer, and strategic choices and challenges facing start-up innovators, and a synthetic framework for the development and implementation of ventures in dynamic environments.
This class is one of two required classes for the Undergraduate Minor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation and is complementary to the Innovation Engineering course.
Class Design
The course is intended for undergraduates with a strong technical background, but does not assume prior business or management experience. The course is highly complementary to and serves as a strong foundation for a range of innovation and entrepreneurship courses around MIT. The course is particularly appropriate for students with a strong technical background who would like to found or join a start-up company at some point in their career.
The course combines interactive as well as online lectures, structured case analyses, and team projects. The course leverages both academic research and practical understanding of the challenges in (and state-of-the-art of) venture engineering. The assignments and team project offer an opportunity to integrate and apply the venture engineering framework in a practical way, and draws from a diverse range of engineering disciplines and settings. Students should be prepared for every class. The class is highly interactive.
Each student will be part of a team that will be responsible for considering alternative commercialization paths for an idea at multiple stages of the venture engineering process. For each stage of this team project, you will be comparing venture design alternatives, and developing insight into the core data and learning process that guide specific choices and commitments.
Stellar Site
- The most recent Stellar site is available here.
Schedule
- Tuesdays in the Spring, 7:00–10:00 pm
Faculty
- Professor Eugene Fitzgerald, Department of Materials Science and Engineering
- Professor Scott Stern, Sloan School of Management
- Professor Bill Aulet, Sloan School of Management
- Dr. Andreas Wankerl, Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Registration
- MIT undergraduates can register through the official course listing here.