EEI Five-phase Process

The Entrepreneurship Education Initiative is based on a unique five-phase process to educate undergraduate students in the area of high growth/high impact entrepreneurial thinking through the development of the individual student as opposed to the development of individual projects. Developing individual projects provides skills and knowledge in a very narrow scope, and typically these skills and knowledge are not readily transferable to other projects. The EEI provides the skills, knowledge and experience necessary to succeed as an entrepreneurial thinker in any size venture that an EEI graduate may choose.

If investors invested in ideas and concepts, project-based education would be appropriate as the focus for an entrepreneurship education program. Common wisdom understands that investors invest in the individual/management team - the people component. This thread of thinking follows with the logical focus of undergraduate entrepreneurship education centered on developing individual students’ growth and development as an entrepreneurial thinker.

Graphic depicting the focus on developing the individual

The curriculum in the EEI is not a series of classes, but rather a process of learning that begins with the basics and takes continuous steps forward to accelerate the learning curve, reduce the number of mistakes that are inherent in the entrepreneurial process, and most importantly, create the opportunity for students to excel. As a result of developing individuals, our students graduate from this program with the ability to apply their skills and knowledge in numerous areas of entrepreneurship in a multitude of endeavors.

We have developed a comprehensive program that is not just a series of classes, but instead takes its participants through a process of learning that is supported by both classroom and experiential components. This process of learning contains 5 phases as follows.

5phaseprcoess

Phase Descriptions

Phase 1: Establishing Potential
Phase 2: Building Skill Sets
Phase 3: Increasing Knowledge
Phase 4: Gaining Experience
Phase 5: Generating Opportunity