Syllabus

CMPS/EECE 598, Section 05
Web-based IT Entrepreneurship

COURSE SYLLABUS
(updated on 8.28.08)

FALL, 2008

INSTRUCTOR: ZONGHUAN WU, VIJAY RAGHAVAN

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OFFICE:	ACTR, Room 206 (Wu)
OFFICE HOURS:	1:00pm ~ 4:00pm, Wednesdays (Wu)
OFFICE PHONE:	482-1667 (Wu), 482-6603 (Raghavan)
E-MAIL ADDRESS:	{zwu, raghavan} at cacs.louisiana.edu
INSTRUCTOR WEB PAGE:	http://www.cacs.louisiana.edu/~zwu, http://www.cacs.louisiana.edu/~raghavan
COURSE PAGE:	http://CMPS598.blogspot.com
CLASSROOM: CLASS HOURS:	ACTR 117 5:00pm - 7:50pm, Thursdays

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A. DESCRIPTION

This course involves a series of important topics that are relevant to IT entrepreneurship, especially in the Web 2.0 era. Emphases are on creating awareness and experience to the process of IT entrepreneurship, and on a few issues that are usually not apparent to new, inexperienced entrepreneurs who have scientific or engineering background. It is an exploratory, experimental course for CACS students. However, it also aims to meet the needs of students with other interests, talents and backgrounds, such as in management, financing, visual arts and so on.

B. ORGANIZATION
This is a dynamic lecture-project course.

Selected topics are presented by the instructors and invited speakers.

One survey/research topic will be assigned to each student, and a short, (say, 5 minutes long) presentation is expected. Topics can be assigned by the instructors and/or come from students with approval of instructors. It can be "An Introduction to Blogs and its roles in IT Business", "How to use Facebook to market a Web Product", "The trend of SaaS - Software as a service" and so on.

One project involves all students and instructors is to be completed both during and outside of class. In the project, students and instructors will work together and "form" an Internet IT start-up "company", experiencing the process of IT entrepreneurship and its' many components and aspects, including but not limiting to idea generation, business planning, product development, marketing, fund raising, website design and others. Mini-presentations, individual sub-projects, software development, mini-paper writing, discussion and debating should be requested as needed. Students and instructors will play multiple roles, including but not limiting to:

• Inventors: students are encouraged to be creative and come up with ideas, which will serve as candidate topic for the class project.
  
• Investors: You are going to be one of the judges to screen inventors' ideas, to see if they are worth for you to "invest". You will be later working on implementing the idea selected by most of the judges.
  
• Software Architects and Engineers: Many of you will contribute in programming: to build the Web-based products.
• Web Designers: Some of you are going to take care of the look and feel of our Website.
• Users: You will play a user' role, to give feedback in needs analysis, usability study and evaluations.
• Financing Officers: Some of you will be in charge of budgeting.
• Business Researcher: Some of you will tell the "company" how big the market is, who are our competitors, what's our strength, weakness, opportunities and threats? How do we address them.
• Marketers and Sales: Some of you will be plan and implement our business strategies.
  

C. COURSE OBJECTIVES

• Creating awareness to a few issues in IT entrepreneurship
• Learning methods for conducting IT entrepreneurship
• Learning by doing: through a project to experience the IT entrepreneurship
• Appreciating and Improving the capability on Exploration, Innovation and Collaboration
  

D. COURSE TOPICS (subject to change)

• Introduction to E-Commerce
• Business Planning
• Finance
• Blue Ocean Strategy
• Collaborative Entrepreneurship
• Needs Analysis and Technology Evaluation
• User-Centered Design and Performance-Centered Design
• Business Models in Web 2.0 era
• Special Topics
  

E. TEXT AND REQUIRED SUPPLIES
No textbook is required.

Suggested Readings:

• Collaborative Entrepreneurship
• Blue Ocean Strategy
• Ontology and Web 2.0 Seminar Slides and Related Materials - by Vijay Raghavan
• Business Planning for Scientists and Engineers - Dawnbreaker

F. GRADING PLAN

• Attendance - 10%
• Participation - 20%
• Peer Review - 20%
• Project - 50%
• Bonus -5%

G. CLASSROOM RULES OF CONDUCT
Please refer to the University policy as outlined in the Graduate Bulletin. Note that cheating, plagiarism, etc. is a breach of student conduct as covered by the UL Bulletin and will, at a minimum, result in a grade of "F" for that activity, and other appropriate sacnctions.

H. SUGGESTION FOR SUCCESS

• A Enthusiast: This is a class for only students who are motivated to become IT entrepreneurs in the future. If you don't have passion to this topic, this class will be a torture to you, and other participants.
  
• Team Player: A lot of collaborations are expected in this class. IT entrepreneurship simply cannot be achieved without dynamic collaborations.
  
• Leader and Risk Taker: For example,
• You are not afraid of giving frank opinions to others (students and instructors) and are willing to respect theirs.
• You are willing to take the chance of doing a presentation in front of whole class with a short notice.
• You are willing to take a leading position and the responsibilities in a sub-task.

TENTATIVE SCHEDULE

Module 1: Course Introduction
Module 2: Introduction to E-Commerce

Module 3: Business Planning

Module 4: Blue Ocean Strategy
Project Class: Inventor Presentations and Venture Capitalists' Screening
Module 5: Needs Analysis and Technology Evaluation (Invited Talk)
Project Class: Project Finalist Inventors' Presentations/Defense
Module 6: User-Centered Design and Performance-Centered Design (Invited Talk)
Module 7: Agile Project Management (Invited Talk)

Module 8: Collaborative Entrepreneurship

Module 9: Business Models in Web 2.0

Invited Talk(s)

Project Classes
At last, Show and Tell

Syllabus template was from http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/syllab-4.htm