UNION COLLEGE

Interdepartmental Studies

Fall 2012

Entrepreneurship & Digital Media

IDM-215, an interdepartmental course that features instructors from several disciplines.

Below are the details of the module taught by:

Lectures: M 6:00-9:30 PM (Sept. 17 and 24), OLIN 306.

Office hours: MWF 2:00-3:00 PM or by appointment.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

The twenty-first century presents students with unprecedented challenges of political, economic, social, and environmental issues. To face the impact of these challenges. "Entrepreneurship and Digital Media" empowers students to civically engage with increasingly complex, diverse, changing, and technology-driven world. The goal of this course is to examine how digital media technologies are being used for entrepreneurial purposes: for creative innovation, to identify new opportunities, develop new collaborations, new approaches, and create new value.

The segment taught by this instructor is made of two class presentations with the following themes:

1. Entrepreneurship.
2. Digital media.
3. For profit enterprises.
4. Not-for-profit organizations.
5. Criminal "enterprise".
6. Know yourself.
7. Got what it takes? Go for it.

SEGMENT DESCRIPTION

This segment will introduce the students to both entrepreneurship and digital media. It will present the characteristics of the entrepreneur and develop an understanding of how entrepreneurs can take advantage of digital media for their business plans. Examples will be presented of enterprises that married digital media with entrepreneurship to develop successful commercial companies, as well as not-for-profit organizations that relied on digital media to spread their entrepreneurial spirit. This segment will also show the "dark side" of digital media in outlawed activities such as hacking and spamming. It will conclude with a recipe for would-be entrepreneurs to embark on realizing their dream goals.

SEGMENT OBJECTIVES

1. Introduce students to both entrepreneurship and digital media.

2. Present the characteristics of the entrepreneur and determining whether you got what it takes to be one.

3. Develop an understanding of how entrepreneurs can take advantage of digital media for their business plans.

4. Introduce examples of enterprises that married digital media with entrepreneurship to develop successful companies.

5. Present models of not-for-profit organizations that relied on digital media to spread their entrepreneurial spirit.

6. Show the "dark side" of digital media when spammers, hackers, and criminals use these tools to serve their outlawed activities.

7. Provide a recipe for would-be entrepreneurs to embark on realizing their dream goals.

REQUIRED BOOK

Guillebeau, Chris (2012). “The $100 Startup,” Crown Business, New York, ISBN 978-0-307-95152-6.

The entire book is a required reading with special emphasis on the following topics:

SEGMENT ASSIGNMENT

Subject

1. This course is taught by a number of instructors. Each instructor will make an input toward your final course grade. The grade that you will receive from this instructor will be based on a conceptual plan of an enterprise as detailed below.

2. You are expected to conceive of a plan that entails a clearly spelled out idea or a well-defined concept. It must include the two elements of entrepreneurship and digital media. This plan must be for the production of a good or a service.

3. The developed plan must address a perceived need, and achieve a specific goal.

4. The developed plan must show how the enterprise will earn money.

Submittals

Students are given until noon on October 15 to develop their plans. Prepare your plan as a Word or a PDF document and email it to this instructor at ghalya@union.edu. The file may include text, pictures, tables, graphs, charts, figures, and any other supplementing materials that you deem necessary to illustrate your plan, including URLs to Internet websites that you may have used in creating your plan. There is no minimum or maximum limit on the length of the file but it must include at least the following:

1. What people really want (see page 36 in book),
2. Reality check checklist (page 51),
3. Decision-making matrix (page 86),
4. The one-page business plan (page 102),
5. The 140-character mission statement (page 105),
6. FAQ, guarantee, and overdelivery (page 120),
7. Thirty-nine-step product launch checklist (page 140),
8. Hustling (page 149),
9. The strategic giving marketing plan (page 153),
10. The one-page promotion plan (page 159),
11. The best social media strategy: talk about yourself (page 199),
12. One-page partnership agreement if any (page 211),
13. Monitoring your business (page 238), and
14. What if I fail? (page 244).

Resources

To help assemble the documents required in this assignment, students may use the assigned textbook or other sources such as (in no specific order): the Internet, technical publications, professional journals, magazines, textbooks, movies, documentaries, and all other credible sources. Students are required to cite and/or reference all the sources they used in developing their plans. Any standard method for citing and/or referencing is acceptable.

Grading Criteria

The grade in this assignment will be given based on the developed idea, quality of concept, soundness of business plan, relevance of content to the subject under consideration, clarity of presentation, organization, and completeness of the documents referred to in the above "Submittals" section.

Model Assignment

The instructor prepared a model assignment for students to use as an example in preparing their own assignments.

SEGMENT GRADE

This segment's grade (20% of course points) will entirely be placed on the required assignment detailed above.

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

Kleon, Austin (2012). "Steal Like An Artist," Workman Publishing Company, ISBN 978-0-7611-6925-3.

Nielsen, Michael (2012). "Reinventing Discovery," Princeton University Press, ISBN 978-0-691-14890-8.

Professor Ghaly HomepageUnion College Homepage