100% Online Certificate in Entrepreneurship

Students assess their own strengths and weaknesses as an entrepreneur using a predictive analytic inventory. They compare their ideal entrepreneur profile against dozens of profiles of women entrepreneurs. They interview and analyze the skills and decision making of these successful women through podcasts, videos, articles, and case studies. Using both online and in-person techniques, they identify and interview women entrepreneurs and learn how they assess opportunity, structure companies, target markets, develop products and services, create action plans, fund ventures, and manage the operational complexities of emerging companies. They ask questions, synthesize the results, and develop a plan for what they need to learn and what resources they need to become a successful entrepreneur of a growth-oriented business.

Students take ideas and build financial models that tell stories of how these ventures will unfold over time into viable businesses. Students use financial planning, data analysis, and management as they build “believable” plans for growth and scaling. They use numbers to support their vision in customer development, marketing, and creation of products and service to convince those with resources to invest in their ventures. Students identify costs and cost categories, predict revenues, and tie the venture’s product or service plan and prospective customer segments to financial results. Students estimate cost of customer acquisition, marketing, and revenue streams. They will also find business models that reflect the nuances of their markets and products in for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Students present their financial plans in a format that inspires and convinces others to invest in their venture.

Prerequisite: Budgeting course/experience or entry level accounting course

In this culminating experience, student apply the various elements of entrepreneurship to the creation of their own coherent, well-developed business or organization model. Students use a complete toolkit for designing and preparing a venture of their own. They apply the basic customer discovery tools of Design Thinking and the Stanford University-based methodology knows as “Lean Launchpad,” an approach specifically developed for emerging ventures. Students employ this highly structured and disciplined approach to take their ideas all the way to business launch by adopting those logical and creative activities. They go from early customer research to opportunity-based ideation to interrogating business assumptions to arriving at evidence-based financial planning and business development. This prepares students to actually launch their business.

Prerequisite: BUS285, BUS345, BUS385, and BUS425

Adding a certificate to your degree program gives you specialized knowledge and career-ready skills to launch your business or product idea. Combining this certificate with your degree gives you a powerful skillset to launch your business or product idea in your area of study.

You can easily start your application now.

Our application deadlines are on a rolling basis, please visit the Admissions page for start dates and their deadlines.

You’ll complete 15 credits to earn the Entrepreneurship Certificate. View courses now.

Yes, you’ll need to have taken an entry-level accounting course such as Principles of Accounting or Accounting I.

Those who add an Entrepreneurship Certificate to their degree program often plan to launch their business in the area they’re studying in their bachelor’s program or move into product management in that area. Those who take the certificate on their own are looking to form a business plan to launch an idea or to upskill their entrepreneurship abilities to step into product management roles.