Stanford Technology Ventures Program : Courses

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Undergraduate Courses

Courses may be open to matriculated students of all levels. Contact instructor for approval.
ENGR 140A

Leadership of Technology Ventures

Tom Byers

Instructor(s): Tom Byers

3-4

Spring

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Units: 3-4

Quarter Offered: Spring

First of three-part sequence for students selected to the Mayfield Fellows Program. Management and leadership within high technology startups, focusing on entrepreneurial skills related to product and market strategy, venture financing and cash flow management, team recruiting and organizational development, and the challenges of managing growth and handling adversity in emerging ventures. Other engineering faculty, founders, and venture capitalists participate as appropriate. Recommended: accounting or finance course (MS&E 140, ECON 90, or ENGR 60).

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ENGR 140B

Leadership of Technology Ventures

Tom Byers

Instructor(s): Tom Byers

1-2

Autumn

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Units: 1-2

Quarter Offered: Autumn

Open to Mayfield Fellows only; taken during the summer internship at a technology startup. Students exchange experiences and continue the formal learning process. Activities journal. Credit given following quarter.

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ENGR 140C

Leadership of Technology Ventures

Tom Byers

Instructor(s): Tom Byers

2-3

Autumn

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Units: 2-3

Quarter Offered: Autumn

Open to Mayfield Fellows only. Capstone to the 140 sequence. Students, faculty, employers, and venture capitalists share recent internship experiences and analytical frameworks. Students develop living case studies and integrative project reports.

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MS&E 140

Accounting for Managers and Entrepreneurs

John Lord

Instructor(s): John Lord

3-4

Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer

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Units: 3-4

Quarter Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer

Non-majors and minors who have taken or are taking elementary accounting should not enroll. Introduction to accounting concepts and the operating characteristics of accounting systems. The principles of financial and cost accounting, design of accounting systems, techniques of analysis, and cost control. Interpretation and use of accounting information for decision making. Designed for the user of accounting information and not as an introduction to a professional accounting career. Enrollment limited. Admission by order of enrollment.

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ENGR 145

Technology Entrepreneurship

Tom Byers, Chuck Eesley, Rebeca Hwang

Instructor(s): Tom Byers, Chuck Eesley, Rebeca Hwang

4

Autumn, Winter, Summer

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Units: 4

Quarter Offered: Autumn, Winter, Summer

How does the entrepreneurship process enable the creation and growth of high-impact enterprises? Why does entrepreneurship leadership matter even in a large organization? What are the differences between just an idea and true opportunity? How do entrepreneurs form teams and gather the resources necessary to create a successful startup? Mentor-guided projects focus on analyzing students' ideas, case studies allow for examining the nuances of innovation, research examines the entrepreneurial process, and expert guests allow for networking with Silicon Valley's world-class entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. For undergraduates of all majors with interest in startups the leverage breakthrough information, energy, medical and consumer technologies. No prerequisites. Limited enrollment.

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ENGR 148

Principled Entrepreneurial Decisions

Jack Fuchs

Instructor(s): Jack Fuchs

3

Winter

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Units: 3

Quarter Offered: Winter

We examine how leaders tackle significant events that occur in high-growth entrepreneurial companies. Students will adapt frameworks and concepts “principles” to their own core values to help prepare their minds for the difficult entrepreneurial situations that they will encounter in their lives – in whatever their chosen career. Students work in teams, using team projects as the basis for class discussion. Each class will typically include a case vignette based on an alumni company, with a distinguished guest speaker. The speaker will discuss not only the business rationale for the decisions taken but also how their principles affected the decision. The class will then apply those principles from the case to one of the team projects. Instructors will facilitate students adapting these principles to their individual styles, providing a foundation for principle-based entrepreneurial leadership. When a company is in its formative years, the entrepreneur is laying down the DNA of the organization. We believe this DNA should be encoded intentionally, with the entrepreneur’s principles as a guide. The teaching team will bring its wealth of experience in both entrepreneurship and VC investing to examine the principles from both of those perspectives. During this course, students will develop an appreciation for how authentic cultures scale and that principles pay. Topics include operational dilemmas, organization building, and investor decisions. Limited enrollment. Admission by application. For graduate and undergraduate students, with a preference for those who have completed one project-based entrepreneurial course or have previous entrepreneurial experience.

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MS&E 175

Innovation, Creativity, and Change

Riitta Katila

Instructor(s): Riitta Katila

4

Not offered this year

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Units: 4

Quarter Offered: Not offered this year

Problem solving in organizations; creativity and innovation skills; thinking tools; creative organizations, teams, individuals, and communities. Limited enrollment.

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MS&E 177

Creativity Rules

Richard Cox

Instructor(s): Richard Cox

4

Spring

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Units: 4

Quarter Offered: Spring

This experiential course explores a wide array of tools that are used to enhance innovation and how those tools are applied across engineering disciplines. Using workshops, demonstrations, and field trips, students will learn how creative problem solving is deployed across engineering fields and, in partnership with the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab, expand their own creative problem solving skills with virtual reality experiences that stretch their imagination. Limited enrollment. Admission by application.

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MS&E 177

Inventing the Future

Tina Seelig and Lisa Kay Solomon

Instructor(s): Tina Seelig and Lisa Kay Solomon

4

Autumn

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Units: 4

Quarter Offered: Autumn

The famous computer scientist, Alan Kay, once said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” As such, we are all responsible for inventing the future we want our descendants to experience. In this highly interactive course, we will be exploring how to both predict and invent the future, and why this is important, by focusing on a diverse set of frontier technologies, including robotics, AI and machine learning, genomics, autonomous vehicles, blockchain, internet of things, and virtual reality. The class will also feature debates in which student teams present utopian and dystopian scenarios, and will include field trips to companies that are propelling us into the future.

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MS&E 178

The Spirit of Entrepreneurship

Ravi Belani, Toby Corey, Emily Ma

Instructor(s): Ravi Belani, Toby Corey, Emily Ma

2

Autumn, Winter, Spring

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Units: 2

Quarter Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring

Is there more to entrepreneurship than inventing the better mouse trap? This course uses the speakers from the Entrepreneurial Thought Leader seminar (MS&E472) to drive research and discussion about what makes an entrepreneur successful. Topics include venture financing, business models, and interpersonal dynamics in the startup environment. Students meet before and after MS&E 472 to prepare for and debrief after the sessions. Enrollment limited to 60 students. Application available at first class session.

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MS&E 180

Organizations: Theory and Management

Kathy Eisenhardt, Pam Hinds

Instructor(s): Kathy Eisenhardt, Pam Hinds

4

Autumn, Winter

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Units: 4

Quarter Offered: Autumn, Winter

For undergraduates only; preference to MS&E majors. Classical and contemporary organization theory; the behavior of individuals, groups, and organizations. Limited enrollment. Admission by application. Students must attend first session.

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MS&E 182

Leading Organizational Change

Robert Sutton

Instructor(s): Robert Sutton

4

Spring

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Units: 4

Quarter Offered: Spring

This course will blend lecture, case discussions, readings about pertinent research, and hands-on projects to learn about what leaders and senior teams can do to bring about broad-based change in complex organizations. Topics will include the role of the CEO and the senior team, organizational growth and scaling, organizational culture, organizational design, and innovation. The course will focus in particular on the causes and cures for dysfunctional organizational friction, and the related question what organizations ought to make difficult or impossible to do. This class is for juniors and seniors. Preference given to students who have taken MS&E 180.

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Graduate Courses

Courses may be open to matriculated students of all levels. Contact instructor for approval.
ME 208

Patent Law and Strategy for Innovators and Entrepreneurs

Jeffrey Schox

Instructor(s): Jeffrey Schox

2-3

Autumn

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Units: 2-3

Quarter Offered: Autumn

This course teaches the essentials for a startup to build a valuable patent portfolio and avoid a patent infringement lawsuit. Jeffrey Schox, who is the top recommended patent attorney for Y Combinator, built the patent portfolio for Twilio (IPO), Cruise ($1B acquisition), and 250 startups that have collectively raised over $2B in venture capital. This course is equally applicable to EE, CS, and Bioengineering students. For those students who are interested in a career in Patent Law, please note that this course is a prerequisite for ME238 Patent Prosecution.

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MS&E 240

Accounting for Managers and Entrepreneurs

John Lord

Instructor(s): John Lord

3-4

Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer

View Details

Units: 3-4

Quarter Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer

Non-majors and minors who have taken or are taking elementary accounting should not enroll. Introduction to accounting concepts and the operating characteristics of accounting systems. The principles of financial and cost accounting, design of accounting systems, techniques of analysis, and cost control. Interpretation and use of accounting information for decision making. Designed for the user of accounting information and not as an introduction to a professional accounting career. Enrollment limited. Admission by order of enrollment.

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ENGR 245

The Lean LaunchPad: Getting Your Lean Startup Off the Ground

Steve Blank, Jeff Epstein, Steve Weinstein

Instructor(s): Steve Blank, Jeff Epstein, Steve Weinstein

3-4

Winter

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Units: 3-4

Quarter Offered: Winter

Apply the "Lean Startup" principles; "business model canvas," "customer development" and "Agile Engineering" to prototype, test, and iterate your idea while discovering if you have a profitable business model. This is the class adopted by the NSF and NIH as the Innovation Corps. Apply and work in teams. Info sessions held in November and December. Team applications required in December. Proposals can be software, hardware, or service of any kind. Projects are experiential and require incrementally building the product while talking to customers/partners each week. Prerequisite: interest and passion in exploring whether a technology idea can become a real company. Limited enrollment.

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CEE 246

Venture Creation for the Real Economy

Raymond Levitt, Michael Lyons, Pedram Mokrian

Instructor(s): Raymond Levitt, Michael Lyons, Pedram Mokrian

3-4

Spring

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Units: 3-4

Quarter Offered: Spring

CEE 246 is a unique course geared toward developing entrepreneurial businesses (both start-ups and internal ventures). This team, project-based class teaches students how to exploit emerging materials science, engineering and IT technologies to radically apply innovation to the "real economy" (e.g., new products and services that produce real economic value for society as well as for the entrepreneurs). Areas of focus include: Sustainable Buildings and Infrastructure, Digital Cities and Communities, Clean Energy, Transportation and Logistics, Advanced Manufacturing ,Digital Health Care, and Education. n nWith one-on-one support from seasoned industry mentors and influential guest speakers, the course guides students through the three key elements of new venture creation: identifying opportunities, developing business plans, and determining funding sources. The class culminates with business presentations to industry experts, VCs and other investors. The goal is to equip students with the knowledge and network to create impactful business ideas, many of which have been launched from this class. To apply for this limited enrollment course, students must submit the following application: https://goo.gl/forms/jWaTr5ZTG05WBsoE2

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ENGR 248

Principled Entrepreneurial Decisions

Jack Fuchs

Instructor(s): Jack Fuchs

3

Winter

View Details

Units: 3

Quarter Offered: Winter

We examine how leaders tackle significant events that occur in high-growth entrepreneurial companies. Students will adapt frameworks and concepts “principles” to their own core values to help prepare their minds for the difficult entrepreneurial situations that they will encounter in their lives – in whatever their chosen career. Students work in teams, using team projects as the basis for class discussion. Each class will typically include a case vignette based on an alumni company, with a distinguished guest speaker. The speaker will discuss not only the business rationale for the decisions taken but also how their principles affected the decision. The class will then apply those principles from the case to one of the team projects. Instructors will facilitate students adapting these principles to their individual styles, providing a foundation for principle-based entrepreneurial leadership. When a company is in its formative years, the entrepreneur is laying down the DNA of the organization. We believe this DNA should be encoded intentionally, with the entrepreneur’s principles as a guide. The teaching team will bring its wealth of experience in both entrepreneurship and VC investing to examine the principles from both of those perspectives. During this course, students will develop an appreciation for how authentic cultures scale and that principles pay. Topics include operational dilemmas, organization building, and investor decisions. Limited enrollment. Admission by application. For graduate and undergraduate students, with a preference for those who have completed one project-based entrepreneurial course or have previous entrepreneurial experience.

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MS&E 270

Strategy in Technology-Based Companies

Kathy Eisenhardt

Instructor(s): Kathy Eisenhardt

3-4

Autumn

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Units: 3-4

Quarter Offered: Autumn

For graduate students only. Introduction to the basic concepts of strategy, with emphasis on high technology firms. Topics: competitive positioning, resource-based perspectives, co-opetition and standards setting, and complexity/evolutionary perspectives. Limited enrollment.

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MS&E 271

Global Entrepreneurial Marketing

Lynda Kate Smith, Victoria Woo

Instructor(s): Lynda Kate Smith, Victoria Woo

3-4

Winter

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Units: 3-4

Quarter Offered: Winter

This class will introduce you to core marketing concepts you need to know to bring a new product or service to market and build for its success. It is geared to both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs alike who have a passion for innovation. Course themes include: Identifying markets and opportunities, defining the offering and customer experience, creating demand, generating revenue, and measuring success. The team-based final focuses on developing a go-to-market strategy based on concepts from the course. Throughout the term you’ll have a chance to learn about managing self, building culture and teams, and opportunity to strategically think about your contribution as entrepreneur or intrapreuneur to your organization, community or society at large. This course is highly experiential and project based. Limited enrollment.

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MS&E 273

Technology Venture Formation

Michael Lyons, Jack Fuchs

Instructor(s): Michael Lyons, Jack Fuchs

3-4

Autumn

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Units: 3-4

Quarter Offered: Autumn

Open to graduate students interested in technology driven start-ups. Provides the experience of an early-stage entrepreneur seeking initial investment, including: team building, opportunity assessment, customer development, go-to-market strategy, and IP. Teaching team includes serial entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Student teams validate the business model using R&D plans and financial projections, and define milestones for raising and using venture capital. Final exam is an investment pitch delivered to a panel of top tier VC partners. In addition to lectures, teams interact with mentors and teaching team weekly. Enrollment by application. Recommended: 270, 271, or equivalent.

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MS&E 275

Intelligent Growth in Startups

Ann Miura-Ko

Instructor(s): Ann Miura-Ko

3

Spring

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Units: 3

Quarter Offered: Spring

Explore the foundational and strategic elements needed for startups to be designed for "venture scale" at inception. Themes include controversial and disruptive insights, competitive analysis, network effects, organizational design, and capital deployment. Case studies, expert guests, and experiential learning projects will be used. Primarily for graduate students. Limited enrollment. Recommended: basic accounting.

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MS&E 276

Entrepreneurial Management and Finance

Tom Byers, Trevor Loy

Instructor(s): Tom Byers, Trevor Loy

3

Spring

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Units: 3

Quarter Offered: Spring

For graduate students only, with a preference for engineering and science majors. Emphasis on managing high-growth, early-stage enterprises, especially those with innovation-based products and services. Students work in teams to develop skills and approaches necessary to becoming effective entrepreneurial leaders and managers. Topics include assessing risk, understanding business models, analyzing key operational metrics, modeling cash flow and capital requirements, evaluating sources of financing, structuring and negotiating investments, managing organizational culture and incentives, managing the interplay between ownership and growth, and handling adversity and failure. Limited enrollment. Admission by application. Recommended: basic accounting.

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MS&E 277

Creativity and Innovation

Tina Seelig

Instructor(s): Tina Seelig

3-4

Winter

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Units: 3-4

Quarter Offered: Winter

This ambitious course focuses on factors for unlocking innovation and entrepreneurship in prison. In partnership with The Last Mile at San Quentin State Prison, students will learn the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to frame and reframe problems, challenge assumptions, generate innovative ideas, and tell compelling stories to communicate their ideas. Students will work collaboratively with the men at San Quentin on a project related to incarceration. Tuesday sessions are experiential workshops and Thursdays are a required lab for team work. Enrollment is limited, and requires an application and interview.

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MS&E 278

Patent Law and Strategy for Innovators and Entrepreneur

Jeffrey Schox

Instructor(s): Jeffrey Schox

2-3

Autumn

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Units: 2-3

Quarter Offered: Autumn

This course teaches the essentials for a startup to build a valuable patent portfolio and avoid a patent infringement lawsuit. Jeffrey Schox, who is the top recommended patent attorney for Y Combinator, built the patent portfolio for Twilio (IPO), Cruise ($1B acquisition), and 250 startups that have collectively raised over $2B in venture capital. This course is equally applicable to EE, CS, and Bioengineering students. For those students who are interested in a career in Patent Law, please note that this course is a prerequisite for ME238 Patent Prosecution.

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MS&E 280

Organizational Behavior: Evidence in Action

Rosanne Siino, Robert Sutton

Instructor(s): Rosanne Siino, Robert Sutton

3-4

Winter, Spring

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Units: 3-4

Quarter Offered: Winter, Spring

Organization theory; concepts and functions of management; behavior of the individual, work group, and organization. Emphasis is on cases and related discussion. Enrollment limited.

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MS&E 297

Hacking for Defense: Solving National Security issues with the Lean Launchpad

Steve Blank, Steve Weinstein

Instructor(s): Steve Blank, Steve Weinstein

3-4

Spring

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Units: 3-4

Quarter Offered: Spring

In a crisis, national security initiatives move at the speed of a startup yet in peacetime they default to decades-long acquisition and procurement cycles. Startups operate with continual speed and urgency 24/7. Over the last few years they've learned how to be not only fast, but extremely efficient with resources and time using lean startup methodologies. In this class student teams will take actual national security problems and learn how to apply lean startup principles, ("business model canvas," "customer development," and "agile engineering) to discover and validate customer needs and to continually build iterative prototypes to test whether they understood the problem and solution. Teams take a hands-on approach requiring close engagement with actual military, Department of Defense and other government agency end-users. Team applications required in February. Limited enrollment.

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ME 368

d.Leadership: Design Leadership in Context

Perry Klebahn, Kathryn Yvonne Segovia, Jeremy Utley

Instructor(s): Perry Klebahn, Kathryn Yvonne Segovia, Jeremy Utley

4

Winter

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Units: 4

Quarter Offered: Winter

d.Leadership is a course that teaches the coaching and leadership skills needed to drive good design process in groups. d.leaders will work on real projects driving design projects within organizations and gain real world skills as they experiment with their leadership style. Take this course if you are inspired by past design classes and want skills to lead design projects beyond Stanford. Preference given to students who have taken other Design Group or d.school classes. Admission by application.

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MS&E 475A

Entrepreneurial Leadership

Tina Seelig

Instructor(s): Tina Seelig

1

Winter

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Units: 1

Quarter Offered: Winter

Description: This seminar explores a wide range of topics related to entrepreneurial leadership through class discussions, case studies, field trips, and guest speakers. It is part of the DFJ Entrepreneurial Leaders Fellowship, which requires an application during Fall quarter.

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MS&E 475B

Entrepreneurial Leadership

Tina Seelig

Instructor(s): Tina Seelig

1

Spring

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Units: 1

Quarter Offered: Spring

Description: This seminar explores a wide range of topics related to entrepreneurial leadership through class discussions, case studies, field trips, and guest speakers. It is part of the DFJ Entrepreneurial Leaders Fellowship, which requires an application during Fall quarter.

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MS&E 489

d.Leadership: Design Leadership in Context

Perry Klebahn, Kathryn Yvonne Segovia , Jeremy Utley

Instructor(s): Perry Klebahn, Kathryn Yvonne Segovia , Jeremy Utley

4

Winter

View Details

Units: 4

Quarter Offered: Winter

d.Leadership is a course that teaches the coaching and leadership skills needed to drive good design process in groups. d.leaders will work on real projects driving design projects within organizations and gain real world skills as they experiment with their leadership style. Take this course if you are inspired by past design classes and want skills to lead design projects beyond Stanford. Preference given to students who have taken other Design Group or d.school classes. Admission by application.

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Doctoral Courses
MS&E 376

Strategy Doctoral Research Seminar

Riitta Katila

Instructor(s): Riitta Katila

2-3

Winter

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Units: 2-3

Quarter Offered: Winter

Classic and current research on business and corporate strategy. Limited enrollment, restricted to PhD students. Course may be repeated for credit.

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Open to all Stanford students
MS&E 472

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders’ Seminar

Tom Byers, Ravi Belani, Emily Ma, Toby Corey

Instructor(s): Tom Byers, Ravi Belani, Emily Ma, Toby Corey

1

Autumn, Winter, Spring

View Details

Units: 1

Quarter Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring

The Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Series (ETL) brings established and budding industry influencers center stage to share what it takes to become a disruptor. Learn about entrepreneurship, innovation, culture, startups and strategy from a diverse lineup of accomplished leaders and entrepreneurs in venture capital, technology, education, philanthropy and more. Open to all Stanford students. Required weekly assignment. May be repeated for credit.

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See a listing of other entrepreneurship courses available across Stanford on the Graduate School of Business website.

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