18-655 The Foundations of Entrepreneurship for Engineers - A Project Course
12 units, Carnegie Mellon University
This course provides an overview of and encourages entrepreneurship and innovation among technical students. It develops an entrepreneurial frame of mind, and provides a framework to generate ideas and implement them along the commercialization path to reality. It assumes no business background and is appropriate for those interested in bringing innovations to market. Students generate ideas in response to real world problems, develop them into opportunities and explore their business potential. Learn to conduct meaningful market research, develop a go-to-market strategy, articulate the value proposition for customers, protect intellectual property, and differentiate products/services from competitors. The focus is on understanding and developing strategies to approach key elements of the entrepreneurial process: opportunity, resources and team. The course consists of a balance of lectures, interactive exercises, discussions, and guest speakers. Students are exposed to market, financial and intellectual property issues, and encounter a real-world perspective on entrepreneurship, innovation and leadership. Students develop a pitch deck for a new venture based on an original innovation. This is a great course to explore startup ideas and determine their real world viability. This class is likely to be more about experiential learning than other classes that you have taken. It is a real world application of academic business courses. It requires creative and innovative thinking, and promotes a different way of viewing opportunity. Entrepreneurship is labor intensive, and successful students should spend 12 hours per week on this course (including class time). They should also expect to find the investment of this time to be enjoyable and for it to positively affect their life and career. Accordingly, grading is less quantitative. In many cases there is not a "right" or a "wrong" answer. Please be patient with this.
Prerequisites: none listed
Offered: Spring 2027, Fall 2026, Spring 2026, Fall 2025
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