Teaching

I intentionally designed this course as an alternative perspective to most courses taught on entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship can be understood from a few analytical approaches: the individual, the social, and the structural. Media narratives and management courses on entrepreneurship tend to focus primarily on the individual (i.e. the “entrepreneurial hero”) but in this course we take a sociological approach to examine and analyze the “startup” (a high-risk early stage entrepreneurial venture firm) from different units and levels of analysis and how these levels interact in different stages of organizational development, growth, and survival. We also cover topics like gender and inequality in organizations, firm culture, organizational power and politics, leadership, networks, and entrepreneurship in developing economies. The course combines lecture and seminar, along with some group activities and guest speakers with extensive experience in entrepreneurship and early stage investing/advising.

Syllabus