Entrepreneurship Concentration (B.Com.) (15 credits)
Offered by: Management (Desautels Faculty of Management)
Degree: Bachelor of Commerce
Program credit weight: 15
Program Description
This concentration is designed to provide students with an understanding of the key concepts and processes involved in starting and managing new ventures. It combines rigor with relevance, as all students will complete a major field project, thus providing an opportunity to apply the concepts acquired in the classroom. The concentration is multidisciplinary and integrative, as it includes courses from across areas in the Faculty. Upon completing the concentration, students will understand how to conceptualize, develop, and manage successful new ventures. The concentration is appropriate for students interested in a wide variety of new ventures, from for-profit private companies to social enterprises and cooperatives.
Note: For information about Fall 2025 and Winter 2026 course offerings, please check back on May 8, 2025. Until then, the "Terms offered" field will appear blank for most courses while the class schedule is being finalized.
Required Courses (6 credits)
| Course | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| MGPO 362 | Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship. | 3 |
Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Study of the key aspects involved in starting and managing a new venture: identifying opportunities and analyzing new venture ideas, identifying common causes of failure and strategies for success, understanding intellectual property systems, comparison of multiple modes of funding. Applies to for-profit and not-for-profit start-ups. | ||
| MGPO 364 | Entrepreneurship in Practice. | 3 |
Entrepreneurship in Practice. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Provides hands-on experience with the development of an entrepreneurial venture or a contribution to an existing entrepreneurial venture. Involves the creation of a venture development or business plan. Applicable to many kinds of new ventures, both private companies and social enterprises. | ||
Complementary Courses (9 credits)
Selected from the following:
| Course | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| ACCT 361 | Management Accounting. | 3 |
Management Accounting. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. The role of management accounting information to support internal management decisions and to provide performance incentives. | ||
| BUSA 300 | Case Analysis and Presentation. | 3 |
Case Analysis and Presentation. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Integration of core knowledge and practice for preparing and presenting case studies, including professor coaching, preparation and presentation feedback, presentation skills, leadership skills, team building skills, analytical skills, logical thinking, debating, persuasive communications and cross discipline work. | ||
| BUSA 364 | Business Law 1. | 3 |
Business Law 1. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. An introduction to the legal system and basic legal principles affecting business. Tort negligence, contracts, forms of business organization, creditors' rights and bankruptcy. | ||
| BUSA 451D1 | Creating Impact Through Research. | 3 |
Creating Impact Through Research. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. The development of community impact initiative projects. Emphasis is placed on hands on experience related to integrated management and research activities aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Research projects are supervised by university professors. | ||
| BUSA 451D2 | Creating Impact Through Research. | 3 |
Creating Impact Through Research. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. See BUSA 451D1 for course description. | ||
| BUSA 465 | Technological Entrepreneurship. | 3 |
Technological Entrepreneurship. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Concentrating on entrepreneurship and enterprise development, particular attention is given to the start-up, purchasing and management of small to medium-sized industrial firms. The focal point is in understanding the dilemmas faced by entrepreneurs, resolving them, developing a business plan and the maximum utilization of the financial, marketing and human resources that make for a successful operation. | ||
| FINE 447 | Venture Capital and Entrepreneurial Finance. | 3 |
Venture Capital and Entrepreneurial Finance. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. This course is designed to provide an introduction to the startup production process with an emphasis on the institutions, processes, and problem solving approaches used in the financing of startup activity. The primary focus of the course is the venture capital industry though classroom discussions will also touch upon alternative funding channels like angel investors, accelerators and incubators, crowdfunding platforms, etc. | ||
| FINE 477 | Fintech for Business and Finance. | 3 |
Fintech for Business and Finance. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Digital technologies and their strategic impact on businesses. FinTech as source of financing, means to learn/engage the market, wider financial inclusion, vehicles for individual investment in innovation. Securities/reward-based crowdfunding, digital payments/transfers, blockchain, crypto-tokens and smart contracts. Theoretical tools from game theory, strategy, corporate finance and economics. Connections to technology firms, platform businesses, traditional banking and venture capital. | ||
| INSY 331 | Managing and Organizing Digital Technology. | 3 |
Managing and Organizing Digital Technology. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Tools and concepts necessary to manage information systems in an organization: hardware/software/telecom administration, knowledge discovery/management, web-technologies, and computer security. Focuses on both mechanical aspects of IT and conceptual understanding with regard to impact on business organizations. | ||
| INSY 334 | Design Thinking for User Experience. | 3 |
Design Thinking for User Experience. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Design of user interfaces for web and mobile applications, design thinking process, principles of good design to produce technology-enabled solutions. Topics include user research methods, problem definition, ideation, prototyping and testing of user interfaces. | ||
| INSY 341 | Developing Business Applications. | 3 |
Developing Business Applications. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Fundamental programming techniques, concepts, and data structures. Discusses modularization and maintainability. Emphasis on facilitating communication and understanding between systems analysts and programmers to support decision-making. | ||
| INSY 432 | Digital Business Models. | 3 |
Digital Business Models. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Discusses the role of the information systems in enabling new digital business models within and across organizations. Focuses on platforms and models of the sharing economy in different industries as well as new forms of business activities enabled by technologies. Discusses economic, strategic and organizational issues of these models. | ||
| INSY 440 | E-Business. | 3 |
E-Business. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Build the knowledge base and skills needed to face today's electronic business challenges, opportunities, and issues. Explore important concepts, models, tools and applications related to e-business. | ||
| INSY 455 | Technology and Innovation for Sustainability. | 3 |
Technology and Innovation for Sustainability. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. The role of information and other technologies in the size and nature of an organization’s environmental ‘footprint’. Achieving sustainability through strategic innovation, such as digitization, recycling, reuse of materials, sustainable design, LEED certifications, smart grids and energy metrics. Analyzing the environmental benefits and hidden costs of novel technologies. | ||
| MGPO 365 | Business-Government Relations. | 3 |
Business-Government Relations. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. The political environment in which business organizations operate: how governments control, regulate, promote, and compete with the private sector and how corporate policy responds to, and seeks to influence, these activities. | ||
| MGPO 432 | Topics in Entrepreneurship. | 3 |
Topics in Entrepreneurship. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Specialized advanced topic in entrepreneurship. | ||
| MGPO 438 | Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation. | 3 |
Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Explores key concepts associated with social entrepreneurship and social innovation – the application of principles of entrepreneurship and innovation to solve social problems through social ventures, enterprises and not-for-profit organizations. Focuses on the social economy, including how the market system can be leveraged to create social value. | ||
| MGPO 440 | Strategies for Sustainability. | 3 |
Strategies for Sustainability. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. This course explores the relationship between economic activity, management, and the natural environment. Using readings, discussions and cases, the course will explore the challenges that the goal of sustainable development poses for our existing notions of economic goals, production and consumption practices and the management of organizations. | ||
| MGPO 445 | Industry Analysis and Competitive Strategy. | 3 |
Industry Analysis and Competitive Strategy. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Analysis of industry structure, macro-environment, and evolution. Evaluation of strategic position, behaviour, and intent of organizations within industry context. Development of strategic recommendations for these firms. | ||
| MGPO 460 | Managing Innovation. | 3 |
Managing Innovation. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Firms face difficulties in developing new products. This course examines the new product development process to understand why problems occur and what managers can do. Topics include the creative synthesis of market and technology; the coordination of functions; and the strategic connection between the project and the strategy. | ||
| MGPO 485 | Emerging Technologies: Organizing and Societal Stakes. | 3 |
Emerging Technologies: Organizing and Societal Stakes. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. An examination of emerging technologies and their impacton decision-making, coordination, control, and innovationin management. Broader societal implications of thesetechnologies and how to develop strategic responses. Focus on an experiential consulting project. | ||
| MRKT 451 | Marketing Research. | 3 |
Marketing Research. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Theoretical techniques and procedures common in marketing research. Topics include: research design, sampling, questionnaire design, coding, tabulating, data analysis (including statistical techniques). Specialized topics may encompass advertising, motivation and product research; forecasting and location theory. | ||
| MRKT 455 | Sales Management. | 3 |
Sales Management. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Responsibilities of the sales manager as they relate to the sales force. These include the selection of process, training alternatives, compensation and incentive plans, supervision and evaluation and budgeting and forecasting. Case studies and discussions of sales force models are used. | ||
| MRKT 459 | Retail Management. | 3 |
Retail Management. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Principles and methods of marketing management as applied to retailing, including strategy and tactics: market structure; consumer behaviour; competition; financial management; human resources planning; promotion; presentation; merchandising; operations; pricing; planning and attaining retail profits. Lectures, text material, outside reading, planned retail visiting, cases. | ||
| ORGB 321 | Leadership. | 3 |
Leadership. Terms offered: Summer 2025 Leadership theories provide students with opportunities to assess and work on improving their leadership skills. Topics include: the ability to know oneself as a leader, to formulate a vision, to have the courage to lead, to lead creatively, and to lead effectively with others. | ||
| ORGB 325 | Negotiations and Conflict Resolution. | 3 |
Negotiations and Conflict Resolution. Terms offered: Summer 2025 A conceptual framework to guide participants through negotiation and conflict resolution process. | ||
| RETL 402 | Innovations in Retailing. | 3 |
Innovations in Retailing. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Exploration of emerging trends, consumer behaviour and technologies and how they can lead to retail innovations that can significantly improve operational efficiency, customer satisfaction and provide a foundation for a sustainable and improved society. | ||
| RETL 410 | Sustainable Retail and Entrepreneurship. | 3 |
Sustainable Retail and Entrepreneurship. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Stages of developing a business concept in sustainability and retail. The experiential learning component culminates in a competition where student teams will pitch their business ideas to a panel of external business experts. | ||