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All businesses begin with the ideas of entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs identify and explore opportunities, research the resulting ideas, locate and organize resources, and begin to turn the ideas into reality. Entrepreneurship 12 helps students to gain an understanding of the entrepreneurial spirit in the context of starting a small business and to learn the skills necessary to effectively carry out entrepreneurial activity.
Within a secure and supportive environment, student teams in Entrepreneurship 12 plan, research, develop, and implement venture plans that link technical and managerial resources and innovation. The course offers students opportunities to develop a business knowledge base, employability skills, and positive attitudes toward lifelong learning.
In Management Innovation 12, students learn that as ventures grow, entrepreneurs often require some management organization to keep the business running. Entrepreneurs then need to delegate authority and responsibility to others within the venture. At this stage of growth, traditional management structures become necessary.
As an organization gets bigger, however, traditional management can become relatively rigid and hierarchical. An organization may then stagnate or plateau. For an established organization to grow, or even survive, it must return to a more entrepreneurial model in which its employees become intrapreneurial. This includes being sensitive to new opportunities, societal change, and technological innovation. An organization's success depends on the ability and willingness of its members to anticipate and respond to its customers' needs and to establish positive, ongoing relationships with clients, suppliers, and the business community.
Management Innovation 12 examines the evolution of an organization from inception through stability to the need for intrapreneurship. It focusses on the strengths and weaknesses of traditional management models; the need for change within organizations; and emerging, less hierarchical management models.
As a culminating activity in Management Innovation 12, students may choose to apply intrapreneurial concepts they have learned to an existing organization. For example, they could suggest how an organization might revitalize itself when it begins to stagnate. The long-term goal is for students to capture the entrepreneurial spirit and be able to use it in any career they choose.
Entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial education helps students build confidence and develop skills as innovators and leaders. It challenges students to apply their knowledge of business concepts and to recognize how newly acquired competencies can help them succeed in business and in life.
Organizers used to cluster learning outcomes within the Entrepreneurship 12 and Management Innovation 12 courses are as follows:
Entrepreneurial Concepts
This organizer includes the skills of recognizing and analysing potential market opportunities. Students learn analytical, research, and decision-making processes to assist them in determining the viability of business ventures. They learn to generate and evaluate ideas and to appreciate problems as potential learning opportunities. These skills help them understand and solve problems not only in business but also in other areas of their lives. The prescribed learning outcomes emphasize:
Formulating a business plan is the process of developing practical steps to accomplish an objective. Students in teams learn to write business plans that describe what is to be done, why it is being done, when it will be done, who will do it, and how it will be done. They learn to consider elements such as operating strategies; organizational structures; administrative policies; operational processes; information management systems; and legal, ethical, and regulatory considerations. Students recognize that planning is essential for success. Skills in defining an objective and formulating a plan help students achieve both business and career goals. The prescribed learning outcomes emphasize:
Students implement and evaluate a mini-venture or major venture and gain an understanding of how businesses are established, maintained, and expanded. Students evaluate their operations and gain insight from their successes or failures. The prescribed learning outcomes emphasize:
Teamwork, networking, leadership, and self-organization skills help entrepreneurs manage human resources effectively. Through the process of initiating, planning, and implementing an entrepreneurial venture, students learn to value the contributions of all team members in its success or failure. They learn personal management, teamwork, and communication skills while also building self-esteem. As well, they learn to identify, use, and evaluate the role of personal networks. The prescribed learning outcomes emphasize:
Organizing for Business
Students learn that an organization is a product of entrepreneurship and learn how it evolves from inception to an organized form. They describe management functions and develop a hierarchical organizational chart. The prescribed learning outcomes emphasize:
Students explore the effectiveness of various management styles, motivational techniques, and leadership roles and examine their changing nature over time. They investigate the internal and external influences on business and the need for management activities that respond to these influences. The prescribed learning outcomes emphasize:
Students identify the challenges of business and other organizations, assess their impact, and formulate responses. They learn to explore and choose management options to deal with these challenges. The prescribed learning outcomes emphasize:
Students analyse organizations to identify the need for change and propose solutions based on an intrapreneurial model. The prescribed learning outcomes emphasize:
Entrepreneurship 12 and Management Innovation 12 can be considered culminating courses in business education. They allow students to use the knowledge and skills learned in other courses and give them a more complete sense of what business is about. These courses are intended to be practical and activity-based, not textbook-driven. These courses are also well suited for web site research and the use of case studies, particularly where students are relatively isolated. They provide excellent opportunities for students and schools to build strong school-community partnerships and to enhance those already in place.
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Revised: October 8, 1998
