Course Overview

This course is designed to help prepare future entrepreneurs to formalize and communicate their business idea to a variety of audiences including potential funders such as banks, other lending institutions, government agencies, and venture capitalists. This course will help ensure that future entrepreneurs understand how to conduct a competitor analysis by asking key questions about their competitors. It will also guide them through the process of profiling customers and determining the target market for their goods or services. With this as a background, and drawing on the other courses in this certificate program, future entrepreneurs will be develop a complete business plan for their business venture including all of the financial components, competitive analyses, and customer profiles.

Learning Outcomes

1. Identify, develop and evaluate a business idea.
2. Acquire the entrepreneurial skills required to gather and analyze industry information, potential markets, assess the impact of competitors and define the needs of potential customers.
3. Analyze the environment or industry in which the proposed business will exist.
4. Conduct a feasibility analysis.
5. Create a customer profile.
6. Analyze the competition and determine their impact on your proposed business venture.
7. Produce strategies to address the competition.

Syllabus

1. Creating a New Business from the Ground‐up
2. Competitor Analysis
3. Customer Profile
4. Business Planning