Engineering Entrepreneurship Courses by Professor Steve Treiber, Ph.D., P.Eng., steve.treiber@utoronto.ca

The secret to entrepreneurial success is continually offering your customers unique benefits that they cannot get from your competitors. The hard part is knowing who your customers are and what they value.

APS1061, “Business Strategy and Intrapreneurship”, In-person and on-line from the classroom. Attending live, dual sessions is optional. Attending first session is essential. If you want to lead a business some day this is the course for you.  Every successful business executive and entrepreneur will encounter complex business problems they must urgently solve.  COVID19, SARS and 9/11 are extreme examples of unpredictable events that can destroy a business.  Leveraging some of the problem-solving skills that you have learned during your engineering education, this course teaches how to define, solve and communicate the solution to a complex business problem using an engineering approach.   Each year we use an unsolved business problem published in newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal as the source of our challenge problem.  In 2024 it's Elon Musk spends $44Billion to take Twitter private and transform it into X.  Here is how the course will work for you. APS1061 course syllabus here.

APS1088, “Business Planning and Execution”, fall term. In-person and Synchronous from the classroom. Attending synchronous/in-person sessions is optional.  If your ambition is to be your own boss, choose your team, determine your schedule, this is the course for you.  Watch this. You will learn how to start and run your successful Canadian business that is profitable on day ONE, using your own start-up.  Help the Professor build the example start-up in class while you build your own through the course assignments.  The course is developed and taught by successful Canadian entrepreneurs who imagined, built and sold at least one of their own successful businesses. The course materials, lectures, and assignments are based on the professor's personal experiences, published best practices and provide students with a toolkit/recipe for starting and running a successful business. The course project is an exercise in how to start one,"from soup to nuts".   APS1088 course syllabus here.  Enrollment begins August 2, 2024.

APS1035, “Learn the Science of Persuasion”, Fall Term. In-person and Synchronous from the classroom.  Watch this. If you are struggling with your go-to-market strategy this is the course for you.  At some point in their careers engineers and scientists find themselves needing to convince their boss, their company, their co-workers, or a client to try some new idea. That new idea, product or service might be so novel that there are no easy comparisons to be made to something existing and proven. That novelty and the deciders' lack of relevant technical knowledge is a hurdle to overcome.  If you have faced that problem this is the course for you. Enrollment begins August 2, 2023.

If you are in a start-up you will learn how to find your first customer, make your first sale, negotiate your first contract, and build a sales pipeline for the future.  Students will learn the keys to selling a “customer” on an idea, product or service that they passionately believe in. The course learning objectives are delivered via lectures, exercises, role play, group presentations and homework assignments, based on real sales pursuits in start-ups  of the course creators and teachers. Students will learn how to organize and communicate their thoughts and facts in a way that will increase their probability of "closing" a deal.