U-M Urban Entrepreneurship Course Syllabus Synopsis (2022-Fall)

Course Overview

How can entrepreneurs apply technological innovation to create sustainable, scalable businesses that improve urban quality of life? This is the question we will work together to answer in the Urban Entrepreneurship course.

More than half the people in the world – 55% as of 2019 – live in an urban community. That proportion is projected to grow to 70% by the year 2050. In the U.S. 80% of the population are urban dwellers. People are drawn to urban communities because they can be vibrant, exciting, and highly productive places that perform well with respect to quality-of-life categories such as:

Despite the many benefits of urban communities, difficulties and disruption can occur in any of the above categories. As a result, new opportunities for entrepreneurial solutions arise again and again.

In Urban Entrepreneurship you will experience what it takes to make lasting improvements in urban quality-of-life through the creation of innovative for-profit businesses. Governments, foundations, and not-for-profit companies have long been associated with efforts to address urban community needs, but despite those efforts, significant needs persist.  Entrepreneurs have a long history of service to urban communities, and rapidly accelerating technology and innovation in a variety of fields give rise to unprecedented opportunities for solving previously intractable problems, and for scaling the solutions.

Learning Strategies

Students will participate with an interdisciplinary team of 3-5 peers to develop, validate, document, and pitch a business model that addresses an important urban community need. A business model is distinct from a business plan, in that the business model captures the “design” of the business, whereas the business plan is a more detailed document that describes how the business will be executed. You and your team will describe the initial steps toward implementing your business model, but you will not be asked to create a business plan.

Each student team will be paired with an existing entrepreneur (Urban Entrepreneur Mentor) who is already working to address a significant urban community need. The teams will focus on applying technological innovation and business model development processes to improve the existing business and make it sustainable, scalable, and possibly even disruptive.

The class will engage with urban entrepreneurs, community organizations, city officials, and other stakeholders to gain a fuller understanding of the issues and challenges facing urban residents and urban entrepreneurs. You and your team members will also spend time validating your business model by performing research and conducting interviews with marketplace stakeholders. You should expect to spend significant time inside and outside of class conceiving, developing, and validating your urban-focused business model.

Learning Objectives

In this course, you will:

1. clearly enunciate the rationale for and opportunities of urban-focused entrepreneurship
2. Engage effectively with urban community members, businesses, and entrepreneurs
3. document, analyze, describe business model for actual urban-focused business
4. create and validate a new or improved urban-focused business model based on marketplace opportunity and technology evolution
5. create pitches and presentations suitable for attracting co-founders, employees, partners, investors
6. identify the key initial steps required for implementation of business or business improvements

Course Agenda Outline

Session	Content
1	Introduction and Overview
2	Urban-Focused Business Models
3	Urban Community Assessment
4	Overview: Create a New Urban-Focused Business
5	Urban Experience Tour
6	Overview: Adapt/Improve/Disrupt an Existing Urban-Focused Business
7	Documenting the Business Opportunity
8	Addressing the Marketplace
9	Validating the Business Model (Customer Discovery)
10	Business Model Innovation 1: Objectives
11	Business Model Innovation 2: Implementation
12	“Selling” the Business Opportunity
13	Presentation Dry Run & Presentation Assessment Practice
14	Student-Led Urban Entrepreneurship Seminar (Final Presentations)