Education

ENT 501– Family Business in Canada: Introductory Course on Family Business. Students analyze the unique benefits and challenges of family firms and the specific relevant behavioural, operational and strategic issues. Students learn to apply their knowledge to analyze the governance effectiveness of family firms from the perspectives of ownership, business and family and  best practices to address the myriad of complexities of family firms.

ENT620 (soon to be ENT 502) New Courses  – Case Studies in Family Business: Focusing on a family business context, the class is organized around the case study method. By focusing on family enterprise cases, the goal of the course is to instill in students strong analysis, recommendation and presentation abilities. As a result, the method also provides a training tool for preparing students to be professional advisors or leaders of family enterprises. The complexity and diversity of issues that case analysis provides leads to students who actively utilize theoretical frameworks in order to ‘make sense’ of real-life situations. This further develops their skills in: problem solving, analytical tools, decision making in complex situations, coping with ambiguities, and working in a team.

ENT 101 - Building an Entrepreneurial Mindset: Introductory course aimed at building an entrepreneurial mindset.

ENT 401 - Design Thinking Experience: An experiential learning opportunity to focus on real-world projects to create a new venture or to innovate within an existing venture (potentially a family business).

ENT 511 – Funding New Ventures: Focused on financial decisions of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial firms, capital structure decision-making and governance issues.

ENT 526 – Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Strategy: Foundational course in entrepreneurship.

ENT 527 – Studies in Entrepreneurship: A deeper and more theoretical approach to entrepreneurship.

ENT 528 –  New Venture Development: An opportunity to  deepen entrepreneurial skills to work on a new venture, which could be an intrapreneurial venture within an existing family business.

ENT 555 – Managing Small and Medium Enterprises: Functional management skills needed for the effective operation of a Small-to-Medium Enterprise (SME) will be explored in detail.

ENT 56A/B – Entrepreneurial Skills Development: A deeply experiential and transformative team learning experience focused on a new venture which could be an intrapreneurial venture within an existing family business.

ENT 570 – Entrepreneurial Self-Development (Part I) and ENT 580 Entrepreneurial Self-Development (Part II):  A deeply experiential and transformative individual learning experience focused on a new venture which could be an intrapreneurial venture within an existing family business. 

ENT 577 – Entrepreneurial Selling: The application of sales principles to real-world entrepreneurial situations.

ENT 601 – Identifying Opportunities: Focuses on the process of opportunity identification for both start-up and existing business environments.

ENT 627 – Social Entrepreneurship and Changemaking: Social entrepreneurship is an area commonly discussed in family businesses, especially by the ‘rising’ generation members.

ENT 725 – Management of Innovation: The course is aimed at developing creative instincts and becoming change agents during their career as  business owners.

ENT 726 - Creating a Business Plan: Familiarizes students with preparing a professional business plan for a new venture  or intrapreneurial venture associated with a family business.

ENT 727 – Applied Research in Entrepreneurship: This course is designed to provide students with the opportunity to conduct applied research in the area of entrepreneurship and enterprise development, including topics related to family business.

ENT 78A/B – Advanced Entrepreneurship: Students gain real-world experience in starting their own companies (entrepreneurship) or creating value implementing innovative projects within an existing company (intrapreneurship – common with family businesses).

ENT 801 – Entrepreneurial Career and Life Design: An opportunity for self-discovery to apply design thinking and entrepreneurship principles and tools for students to design their careers and build human and social capital.

BUS 800 – Strategic Management: A demanding capstone course during which real companies (including family businesses) are examined each week.

FIN 401 – Managerial Finance II: Students learn how firms assess risk when making investment decisions which is a crucial skill for family business leaders.