The first academic period for first-year MBA students at Fuqua is the Summer Term. It is composed of three courses that allow for the ‘return to school’ experience to be a gradual adaptation as longer and more intensive Fall Term 1 approaches. One course that stood out to me during my Summer Term experience last year was Entrepreneurial Mindset and Action. It was a new course, debuted to our Class 2022, to stimulate us to develop entrepreneurial perspectives and skills through experiential learning activities.

The course, taught by Christine Moorman and Manuel Adelino, was designed to equip us to innovate in entrepreneurial ventures as well as established organizations across a wide-ranging set of for-profit and nonprofit industries. Despite not having the goal of creating my own company or considering myself an entrepreneur, I found this class insightful and resourceful for my technology industry career goals. It shifted my mindset, teaching me how to be an entrepreneur within established companies by developing meaningful perspectives to solve essential problems through user-centered and resource-efficient approaches. The course was an excellent introduction to putting our vision into motion and turning our ideas into solutions during our time at Fuqua and beyond.

What I enjoyed the most about this course were the experiential exercises. From simulations where we ran our own business to real-life business problems shared by corporate guests, we got to apply the concepts beyond the theoretical knowledge. Despite it being a virtual course due to COVID-19 restrictions, professors were creative and flexible, using multiple platforms that would allow us to actively engage in every single class. They made the most out of the virtual environment by inviting multiple speakers too! We interacted with a broad range of entrepreneurs who shared their ventures alongside insightful advice for all of us.

Finally, our main project for the course was to develop a new business model for the podcast industry to compete within our section. Along with my team, we applied the course frameworks, tools, and guiding processes and principles to a real entrepreneurial venture. It challenged us to be disruptive and innovative, which prepared me for my own recruiting for the tech industry later in the year. It made us think outside the box, reimagining a technology such as podcasts despite its already high adoption and maturity. My team won the competition by creating a cooking podcast that combined culinary and travel podcasts with meal kit delivery services.

Business today requires talent possessing an innovative spirit combined with the ability to see opportunities, create value, and marshal resources to solve big problems for the benefit of business, customers, and society. This is precisely what you can expect to take away from the Entrepreneurial Mindset and Action course at Fuqua.