This forum explores the notion of inspired business, the triple bottom line, and the four mindsets of inspired leaders. The forum will also serve as an opportunity to orient new students and build relationships at all levels. In a nutshell, we want you to feel excited, energized, and intrigued by what’s to come in the graduate journey. The overall objectives are: to understand Boler’s overall strategic direction – Inspired Business; to understand the concept of the sweet spot in the Triple Bottom Line, and to understand the four mindsets and their role in a Boler graduate education.

Students will complete a co-op or internship with a Northeast Ohio startup company or with an innovative unit of a corporation. With the assistance of Northeast Ohio partners and our Boler Professional Development staff, students will be guided to an experience to build relationships with people and organizations in their desired career path. Capstone Course.

The focus of this intensive experience is to expose students to the highs, lows, pressure, and fun of the entrepreneurial process. Over the course of 3 full days, students will network, pitch ideas, build teams, find customers, experiment, build prototypes, and pitch their product and process at a final demo event. The emphasis will be on students experiencing the entire entrepreneurial process, while being mentored by actual entrepreneurs and investors from the JCU Entrepreneurs’ Association and partners in the Northeast Ohio community such as Jumpstart, Inc. During this experience, students will identify and begin working on an entrepreneurial/innovative project. This could be a startup idea, or an intrapreneurial project within their current organization. They will continue to work on this project through the rest of the curriculum.

Prerequisites: enrolled in Boler Graduate Program

The focus of this course is on design thinking, a problem-solving approach that emphasizes customer empathy, prototyping, and iteration. The course is designed around a model of empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping and testing. A series of project management aids are incorporated to manage the process. Students will continue developing their Bootcamp project with the assistance of entrepreneurial and corporate mentors matched through the JCU Entrepreneurs’ Association and partners in the Northeast Ohio community.

Prerequisites: ER550

The focus of this course is failure. Students will analyze the causes of failure, and will be presented a framework that will enable them to learn from failure. Through in-depth reflections of personal and professional failures, students will develop a portfolio of resilience mechanisms to better prepare them for an entrepreneurial success. Students will study and analyze failures in the industry of their Bootcamp Project. Students will work with entrepreneurial and corporate mentors matched through the JCU Entrepreneurs’ Association and partners in the Northeast Ohio community to identify and navigate failures specific to the industry of their Bootcamp Project.

Prerequisites: ER550

Students will apply design methodologies and innovation tools while working closely with a client company with a real problem to solve. Students will study business model innovation, and will learn how to identify new business opportunities, design and test breakthrough concepts, and develop a viable business strategy and operating model.

Prerequisite: ER 5550 or ER 550

The Case Study 1 class will focus on creativity, innovative thinking, ethics and social responsibility. The case will present students with a current in-depth problem, challenge or opportunity an entrepreneur in Northeast Ohio is currently facing. The issue presented will require the use of topics taught in previous courses. These case studies will be delivered by the Muldoon Center Social Innovators in Residence (SIR). The program will include entrepreneurs who are also social innovators. The case study will result in a presentation to program faculty and a group of entrepreneurs and investors.

Prerequisites: ER550

The Case Study 2 class will focus on business modeling and financial management. Each case study will present students with a current in-depth problem, challenge or opportunity an entrepreneur in Northeast Ohio is currently facing. The issue presented will require the use of topics taught in previous courses. These case studies will be delivered by the Muldoon Center Social Innovators in Residence (SIR). The program will include entrepreneurs who are also social innovators. The case study will result in a presentation to program faculty and a group of entrepreneurs and investors. Capstone Course.

Prerequisite: ER 5550 or ER 550

Explores a variety of customer-centric techniques for identifying opportunities, generating ideas to fit those opportunities, and translating those ideas into value propositions that, in turn, create value for the organization. Also includes a framework for understanding the application of business models to new ideas and methods for communicating those ideas.

Prerequisite or corequisite: ER 5550 or ER 550

How to refine innovative ideas to fit customer needs using financial and planning tools. Students will learn how to plan the implementation of their innovation and forecast its impact. The ability to communicate qualitative and quantitative information through the process is also stressed.

Prerequisite: ER 5550 or ER 550

This course provides you with a clear roadmap of effective leadership. In many ways, this course is all about you, your career, and your future self. Through intense exploration and reflection, the course will shed light on the wide variety of skills necessary for success as a leader and manager. The purpose of this course is to provide you with a solid understanding of leadership at the individual, group, and organizational levels.

This course focuses on the importance of ethics and social responsibility in business and nonprofit settings. The course is designed to increase students’ awareness and appreciation of ethical and social responsibility issues, provide conceptual approaches to guide and improve decision-making, and learn to develop systems that create more ethical and socially responsible work environments.

Focuses on entrepreneurial solutions to societal problems in global contexts. Students will learn social entrepreneurship as a strategy for engaging in profitable enterprise activity that results in providing solutions to both macro and micro problems in different countries.

Prerequisite: MK 301 or MK3301 (min grade C) or MK 551 or MK5551 or MB 574 or MB5574 or waiver