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A classroom of students listens attentively as two instructors present at the front of the room, with slides and whiteboard notes about business models and marketing strategies displayed behind them.

Exploring Entrepreneurship

Become a Summer Trojan and earn college credit.

Program Overview

Blending theory and practice, this course introduces high schoolers to the challenges and rewards of building a business.

Entrepreneurship is about finding your passions and talents and putting them to work in a changing marketplace. It’s also about challenge, persistence and generating market impact by creating new execution strategies for doing old things in new ways.

This entrepreneurship summer program is not a “spectator” course — be prepared to jump in and get involved! You will be talking with industry leaders out in the business world. You will be actively researching, testing, and putting your ideas and concepts to work.

A large group of students sits around a conference table listening to a professional speaker during a company visit, with panoramic windows providing a view of the cityscape outside.

Key Information

Topics of Study

Accounting and finance
Marketing
Human resources
Creativity and innovation
Business plans
Ethics
Personal branding
Building your network

Learning Highlights

Develop problem-solving approaches and processes of successful entrepreneurs
Evaluate industry and market trends to exploit opportunities
Quantify sources of sustainable competitive advantage
Develop value propositions, pricing models and business models
Practice what you learn by creating your own business through a variety of assignments and teamwork
Build public speaking skills to compellingly present your ideas to an audience

Requirements

Students must bring their own laptops
Students must dress professionally for all field trips. Business casual is not required, but long pants, closed-toed shoes and button-down shirts are preferred.
This class is best suited for self-motivated, independent and resilient students, who have a good sense of humor
Students should expect to undertake a significant amount of work outside of the classroom, complete all of their work in a timely fashion and spend time in the marketplace doing research and collecting data for their ideas.

Week	Focus	Key Topics	Assignments and Activities
1	Ideation and Innovation	Value proposition; design; creativity; invention	Understanding how entrepreneurs get more than the sum of their parts.
2	Finding Product-Market Fit	Lean startup methodology; effectuation; customer discovery	Field trip and guest speakers who are active founders of rapidly growing enterprises.
3	Financing and Go-to-Market Strategy	Financial analysis; customer acquisition; customer lifetime value; marketing basics	Field trip and guest speakers from venture capital.
4	Pitching and Growing Your Venture	How to pitch and develop public speaking skills; developing a leadership philosophy for young startup founders	Final pitch competition.

[The best part of this course was] being able to hear from active and former founders, along with being coached and taught by a neuroscientist. It was really awesome to understand the psychology of success and founding.

— USC Summer Programs student participant