Course Description

This Franklin CREATE! course cultivates an entrepreneurial mindset characterized by staying curious, thinking creatively, identifying opportunities, and trying new approaches. Through hands-on, collaborative projects, students will test ideas, connect insights across arts and sciences, and develop adaptable skills for addressing real-world challenges in any field.

Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Graduate students will participate in discussion sections held outside regular class meeting times. These meetings will provide time to reflect on how entrepreneurial thinking can strengthen their professional skill sets. Students will apply these insights through practical assignments, such as preparing cover letters for non-academic positions or crafting responses to common interview questions.

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Athena Title

Entrepreneurial Thinking

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Undergraduate Pre or Corequisite

One general education course in Area I Foundation (or exemption/place-out equivalent) and one in Area III Quantitative Reasoning (or exemption/place-out equivalent)

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Semester Course Offered

Offered fall, spring and summer

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Grading System

A - F (Traditional)

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Student learning Outcomes

• Students will integrate core entrepreneurial concepts and customer/community discovery to frame problems, develop early ideas, and iteratively refine innovative solutions through informed risk-taking.
• Students will evaluate the viability and sustainability of an idea by formulating testable assumptions and collecting, analyzing, and interpreting qualitative and quantitative discovery data.
• Students will examine the ethical and equity implications associated with innovation.
• Students will articulate how entrepreneurial thinking connects to your discipline, goals, and future through regular opportunities for reflection.
• Students will collaborate effectively in interdisciplinary teams by establishing shared goals, roles, norms, and decision-making processes; giving and receiving constructive feedback; and resolving conflict to sustain progress under uncertainty.

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Topical Outline

• Ideation
• Hypothesis creation/testing
• Customer/community discovery
• Customer/community interview protocols
• Value proposition
• Customer segments
• Market types
• Pivots
• Minimum Viable Products
• Product development

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Institutional Competencies Learning Outcomes

Analytical Thinking

The ability to reason, interpret, analyze, and solve problems from a wide array of authentic contexts.

Creativity & Innovation

The capacity to combine or synthesize existing ideas, images, or expertise in original ways and the experience of thinking, reacting, and working in an imaginative way characterized by innovation, divergent thinking, and risk taking.

Leadership & Collaboration

The capacity to engage in the relational process of optimizing personal and collective strengths toward a common goal.

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