Team Entrepreneurship and Business Management Pathway Programs Proposal
Learn to become a Changemaker through team-entrepreneur-ship while earning your Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Arts degree in beautiful Olympia, State of Washington
Team Entrepreneurship Pathway Introduction
Entrepreneurship is the individual’s ability to translate ideas into action and change or improve the current status quo. It encompasses creativity, innovation and risk-taking, as well as the ability to plan and direct action towards the achievement of goals. These qualities support everyday life in education, at work, in leisure activities and in other societal activities. These qualities are needed in entrepreneurship, but they also enhance workers’ awareness of their work and help them seize opportunities (Finland Entrepreneurship Education).
For entrepreneurs, business managers and people wishing to participate in the GIG economy and increase their chances of success, many master essential business skills. These skills cover the areas of Strategic Planning, Managerial Accounting, Decision Methods, Finance, Financial Accounting and Taxation, Business Law, Economics, Human Resource Management, Internet Marketing and Cloud Computing. This Business Management and Entrepreneurship Pathway exposes change-maker student learners to specific groups of skill sets delivered through programs in a specific level by level sequence.
Finland has developed an excellent training methodology for entrepreneurship training called the Partus method or Timiiakatemia method. At Evergreen we have merged our unique Evergreen inter-disciplinary training method with methodologies used in the Partus method in Finland as well as learning from the Mondragon Team Academy Methods who have adopted and modified the Partus Method.
Promoting sustainable business practice is a common pathway and program objective and is a pervasive consideration in decision making processes explored. Students are exposed to the differences between for profit, not for profit, co-ops, Social Purpose Corporations (S.P.C’s), B Corporations and B Certified organizations. They will learn how to take operational decisions based on cooperative leadership principles, quantitative and qualitative data analysis, understand and manage operations and human resources and work with financial data to launch projects.
Upon completion of the pathway students will be able to:
- Identify employment and income generating opportunities in their preferred disciplines and create value propositions with skills requirements reflected in current student academic statements.
- Test the feasibility of value propositions.
- Build a business model around the value proposition canvas and business model canvas..
- Develop a marketing strategy for the business.
- Learn how to develop an organizational website, perform search engine optimization and implement operations in the cloud.
- Learn how to manage people in the organization focusing on team work and be able to identify skills gaps.
- Understand the different forms of enterprise entities.
- Understand both personal and organizational tax implications of doing business.
- Distinguish different methods of financing a business and investor, grantor and lender financing requirements.
- Prepare a business plan using commercially available software which will include projected financial statements for a business.
- Learn how to pitch a business plan to investors, donors and lenders.
- Learn how to ope-rationalize a business plan and start the business.
Pathway Program Level Summaries
Pre-foundations orientation Level 1 – Interdisciplinary (4 hours – 16 hours).
During the pre-foundation orientation students are exposed to various employment and income generating opportunities within a broad discipline. This can be done within most if not all programs. Students are exposed to the roles not for profit, for profit and governmental organizations play in the discipline by undertaking field trips, seminars and guest speaker events. Students learn how to dialogue effectively, utilize the value proposition canvas and plot their value proposition on a tool called the learning compass.
Outcome
Upon completion of the pre-foundations orientation the student will understand what opportunities there are to earn a living within a discipline by identifying specific activities that are performed in the field. They will gain an understanding of where they come from, what brought them to where they are now, where they are going and how they will know when they get there. In terms of knowing where they are going they think in terms of value they can deliver in the future as they embark on their careers. In dialogue training sessions, while students explore their learning compasses and value proposition canvas, they begin to appreciate the value of having dialogue in a diverse setting while working through their own learning journeys by actively sharing in dialogue sessions.
Integrating this orientation into programs will expose students to the need for them to begin thinking about their careers and learning purpose and stimulate interest in students to pursue further studies in change-making entrepreneurship or business. Ideally this orientation will have as learning outcome a unique value proposition tied to their individual learning compasses.
The introductory or foundations program introduce the students to the concept of business and how the different disciplines within business interact to develop and ope-rationalize effective business strategies and illustrate their understanding of the interaction by completing an executive summary of a business plan. The business foundations program can be presented as a standalone program but ideally as a interdisciplinary program combining almost any discipline such as for example Agriculture, Food Justice and Systems, Marine Biology, Physics, Fine Art, Drama and Film, Environmental Science, Computer Science, etc. that have been exposed to the pre-foundations orientation.
The intermediate pathway exposes learners to statistics, decision science and the necessary business skills as outlined by the Institute of Management Accountants that is required coverage for the Certified Management Accountant professional examinations.
Business Skills Coverage of the intermediate pathway.
Financial Reporting, Planning, Performance, and Control
External Financial Reporting Decisions
Planning, Budgeting, and Forecasting
Performance Management
Cost Management
Internal Controls
Financial Decision Making
Financial Statement Analysis
Decision Analysis
Income Tax analysis, planning and return preparation.
Management
Team Entrepreneurship
Knowledge Creating Company design, setup and use.
Strategic Planning.
Cooperative Leadership.
Corporate Affairs Management and Aspects of Business Law.
Outcome
Students will prepare a business plan and a search engine optimized website for the business based on an activity identified in the pre-foundations orientation or may be provided with a generic activity as a group project. The business plan is then used to present a pitch to investors, lenders and creditors.
Capstone – Changemaker Lab Program with varying themes
In our Changemaker lab program students work on actual projects and learn how to create knowledge creating companies, learning by doing.
Evergreen is a progressive, public liberal arts and sciences college located in Olympia, Washington, in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Learn more.
The Evergreen State College has been accredited continuously by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities since receiving initial accreditation in 1974. The Commission most recently reaffirmed Evergreen’s accreditation in 2014.