I’m teaching a class with Damon Phillips this Spring at Columbia. It’s pretty exciting.
Here’s what it’s about: how to start startups and build them into something important.
It’s a survey; it covers a broad range of topics related to startups.
But it’s not a workshop or a practicum type of course. We aren’t going to incubate real company ideas and raise money at the end or anything.
It’s also not a “go! go! go!” hurry-up-and-just-drop-out type of course which says the most important thing is simply doing it.
Instead we have been assembling the body of knowledge that history, sociology, economics, business, and startup ‘scholars’ have been developing about the people, technologies, and methods that organizations use to capitalize on innovation and impact the world (commercially, socially, etc.)
I think it will look more like a seminar — read some points of view on a topic, then come in and debate the ideas and see if they really make sense, try to apply some of the knowledge to problems in the space and get critique from peers and experts.
More information on this knotepad here — http://tiny.cc/venturing