Program Overview

Program Brochure 2023-24
Entrepreneurship
Application deadline

March 1 for Fall Semester

Minimum admission requirements

Quebec Secondary School Diploma or a level of education that is deemed equivalent by the College.

Prerequisites

High School Diploma

About the program

The Entrepreneurship option of the Business Management program is a three-year program designed to provide students with all of the necessary skills and knowledge needed to build and operate a successful business. Our curriculum covers a broad spectrum of competencies in the areas of marketing, finance, accounting, sales, products & services, online ventures (e-Commerce) and legal issues with a focus on best practices required for Quebec and international businesses.

Our program includes a unique and innovative approach to the business world. The “Incubator” component offers students the opportunity to put into practice the theoretical portion of the program by designing and launching their own business. The Incubator courses include the essential business principles related to funding, investment, strategic planning, facility planning, coaching, cost assessment as well as needs in human resources.

In this program, you will learn to:

  • Start-up a business from A to Z
  • Acquire a franchise in pre-established companies
  • Foster the continued development of family owned businesses
  • Manage aspects of a commercial project.

Program Grid

Introduction to Entrepreneurship

The goal of this course is to introduce students to the state of entrepreneurship in Canada and to explain the “what is” of entrepreneurship. It covers: 1) the significance of entrepreneurship in Canada, 2) entrepreneurial processes – from finding and evaluating good business opportunities to new venture start-up and growth issues, and 3) entrepreneurial behaviour, a critical success factor in new venture creation. Students will learn key entrepreneurial concepts through lecture material, experiential learning, videos and interaction with successful entrepreneurs via Skype

Introduction to Entrepreneurial Marketing

Business success is based on meeting customer needs. Start-ups and emerging companies use entrepreneurial marketing to help establish themselves in existing and emerging industries. Different from traditional marketing, entrepreneurial
marketing puts the focus on innovation, risk taking, and being proactive. Entrepreneurial marketing campaigns try to highlight the company’s greatest strengths while emphasizing their value to the customer in order to stand out from
competitors and establish a presence. This course begins with an overview of traditional marketing before switching focus from marketing relevant to entrepreneur. Topics covered are the marketing envi¬ronment, strategic planning, market segmentation, product development, pricing, distribution, promotion, consumer decision making, control, marketing management, international reach with marketing and e-marketing.

Introduction to Business Software Tools

In this course, students gain a fundamental understanding of day-to-day business applications most common
in small businesses with the course focus on Microsoft Office (Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint),
Microsoft Outlook, and Prezi. This is a complete lab-based course where students will learn these applications by
working on class assignments in the lab.

Social Media as a Business Tool

This is a BYOD (bring your own smart device) course. Whether it͛s Facebook, Twitter, Linkedln, Instagram, Google+, or YouTube, the business world’s adoption of social media has caused changes in the way that we conduct business. This hands-on course will explore the use of social networking from a business perspective. The focus will be on learning to use social media as a business tool to establish and maintain an appropriate online presence. Ethical considerations when using social media will also be discussed.

Entrepreneurial / Innovative Mindset

This course has two purposes: 1) to learn from the successes of other entrepreneurs and, 2) to learn how to think
innovatively. Knowing that entrepreneurs are all different, the course aims to study the experiences and mind-sets of 10
well-known entrepreneurs from a variety of different fields so students can learn from the experiences of others and so
that they can be inspired in their own entrepreneurial adventures. The course will also coach students on how to think
more creatively. Skype will be used to connect remotely with guest entrepreneurs.

English

French

Economics and e-Commerce

This course uses theoretical models and studies of old economy industries to help understand the growth and future of
electronic commerce. It begins with an overview of basic economic concepts like scarcity and demand and supply before
discussing the relevant topics from industrial organization including monopoly pricing, price discrimination, product differentiation, barriers to entry, network externalities, and search and first-mover advantages. A big part of the course
will be an examination of several e-industries. In this section, extensions, and applications of the ideas from the first part
of the course will be discussed, drawing analogies to previous technological revolutions, and read current case studies.

Consumer Behaviour for Entrepreneurs

This course presents the study of consumer behaviour with the intent of allowing students to be able to choose
appropriate media and messages for promoting products and services and develop appropriate marketing strategies for both B2B (“Business to business”), seller-buyer and B2C (“Business to consumer”) relationships. It addresses consumer behaviour from both a managerial and consumer perspective. Students learn about how consumers make routine and complex decisions; what cognitive and experiential processes are involved in these decisions; how behaviour is affected by the individual consumer͛s personal characteristics, culture and reference groups; and the implications of consumer behaviour for marketing strategy.

Social & Sustainable Entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurs are committed to furthering a social mission and improving society. Increasingly, stakeholders of
companies (including the consumers who buy the products or services) are challenging enterprises to deliver a positive impact on the community. Sustainable entrepreneurship as the process of recognizing, developing and exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities that create economic, ecological, and social value. In this course, students are taught how to be social entrepreneurs who practice sustainable entrepreneurship.

Business Communications for Entrepreneurs

To run successful organizations, entrepreneurs need to develop and enhance their business communication skills to communicate with business investors, employees and customers effectively. This course provides the essential principals and techniques of clear, concise, and effective business communications with emphasis on client presentations. Students learn to structure presentations in ways that match the message to the audience; customize elevator speeches; and learn
about generally accepted workplace guidelines for online communications. Key goals of this course include preparing
students to become more comfortable in front of an audience, and to learn how to communicate clearly and effectively
with clients in both the verbal and written forms.

English

Humanities

French

Physical Education

Small Business Accounting

Many new ventures fail because they do not know their financial situation. This process starts with understanding the
importance of maintaining accurate financial business records. In this course, practical accounting designed to teach you
how to keep the books of a small company (and how to manage transactions and finances for the business) are taught
using QuickBooks.

Web Page Design for Marketing and Sales

This course provides the student with the fundamentals of how to plan, design, and launch a complete Web site with
creative interfaces, strong graphic images, and functional site organization as a sales space for products and/or services.
Using software such as Adobe Dreamweaver, you will construct a web site that can be used to impact marketing and sales. The emphasis will be on treating the Web as a form of visual communication rather than on the programming, although technical issues will be sufficiently covered. A major component of the course is the completion of a substantial website
which will be evaluated, in part, for its ability to clearly and efficiently communicate to the target audience.

Managerial Statistical Methods

This course gives an introduction to business statistics, methods of describing, summarizing, graphically presenting,
measuring and analysing statistical data using a statistics computer package. Students will be exposed to the theoretical
underpinnings of management decision tools including probability distributions, covariance applications, sampling
distributions, control charts, estimation and hypothesis testing. Emphasis will be on how to apply various statistical
techniques in the support of managerial decisions in the various functional areas of business including marketing.

Legal Issues for SMBs and Entrepreneurs

The goal of this course is to familiarize students with the legislative foundations of doing business and with the special
issues specific to entrepreneurship and to running a successful SMB (“small- or medium-sized business͟”). Lecture topics
include:
Negligence and liability, Risk management, Procedural fairness in decision-making, Discrimination, Intellectual property (copyright, trademark and patents), Contract and employment law, Competition law, Labour law/labour code, Ethical issues when using social media, Disagreements between business partners, Closing your business, Protection of intellectual property.

Fundamentals of Direct Selling

This course teaches the sales process from prospecting to after sales service. Students are taught the importance of
developing a sales plan, how to marry the benefits to customers’ needs and open the door to targeted, and customer-aware promotion. Students come to understand the role of personal selling in marketing and in society, as well as its application.

English

Humanities

Français du travail

Finance for Entrepreneurs

This course focuses on the financial implications of project and business planning, and the relevant financial matters
required to manage a project/business. The course provides the essentials any owner should have when considering
proposing projects and assessing its financial viability and impact on the business.

Digital Marketing

This course is designed to provide an overview of strategies, techniques, and tools across social media, mobile marketing, e-mail marketing, online analytics, and search engine marketing to fully leverage the Internet for achieving the business goals of acquiring, converting, and retaining online customers. Learn how to integrate new tactics and strategies with traditional marketing including website best practices; marketing through social media: blogs, podcasts, wikis, video;
mobile marketing; building online traffic; understanding web analytics & behavioural measurement; and understanding metrics that determine success as well as how to use digital marketing to reach international markets.

Marketing Research for Entrepreneurs

This course provides the student with the skills and tools needed to understand and evaluate marketing research.
Marketing research involves developing research questions, collecting data, analyzing it and drawing inference, with a
view to making better marketing decisions. To this end, the course is organized into two basic parts: (1) Data Collection
and Research Design, and (2) Tools and Applications of Market Research. Marketing research is vital in the assessment of new business opportunities, go/no-go decisions for new products, pricing and product design issues, among other business issues. This is a hands-on course in which bring-your-own-device (BYOD) is encouraged.

Assessing & Managing Risk

Feasibility is the process by which entrepreneurs assess and manage risk. Feasibility is a combination of first taking an idea and turning it into a concept. That concept is then tested to assess the market risks, the distribution risks, the
perceived value of the benefits and finally the financial risks. Students will be actively researching, testing and crafting a
comprehensive feasibility plan based upon an initial business concept of your choosing. Consequently, students are
required to undertake a significant amount of work outside of class.

English

Humanities

Complementary

Physical Education

Franchising / Taking Over a Family Business

This course examines both franchising and family business in two parts as well as another part where franchises are also
family owned. A franchise is an agreement or license between two parties giving a person or group (the franchisee) the
right to market a product or service using the trademark or trade name of another (the franchisor). Families have built
successful businesses around thfranchising model, as both franchisors and franchisees. For the franchising part of the course topics include the nature and operation of franchising as a business model; regulations that affect franchising; the commercial realities of the franchise relationship; and trends in franchising. For the family business part of the course,
topics include the risks and challenges regarding finances, legal issues, and marketing of a family-owned business.

Integrated Marketing Communications

Integrated Marking Communications (IMC) involves coordinating the organization͛s promotional mix (communication elements – advertising, sales promotions, personal selling, public relations (PR) & direct/online marketing) so that they work together to convey a consistent company & brand message. Topics include an overview of integrated marketing communications; an understanding and description of the various components of the communications mix including social media; and the implementation of an integrated communications plan.

Human Resource Management for Startups

This course gives the student an understanding of how to attract, motivate, compensate and retain the best people for a
start-up. Critical contemporary issues of Human Resources such as wellbeing and equality and diversity in the workplace, and workplace environments that are virtual are examined as well as all traditional functions of human resources management that a typical start-up would encounter.

Negotiation Skills for Entrepreneurs

This course is designed to provide students with the skills necessary to turn disputes into deals, deals into better deals and to resolve intractable problems. Students will learn to turn conflict toward collaboration. Taught in an active learning environment, students will work in group of peers – participating in discussions and simulations that cover a range of complex scenarios ranging the entrepreneurs’ typical face.

Business Plan Laboratory

This is a highly interactive course wherein students work within a network of like-minded students to build the major
components of a business plan, ideally for the concept that the student will be developing in the Incubator 1 course and
emerge with your first draft in hand.

Incubator 1: Idea / Innovation Phase

This is a highly interactive course wherein students work within a network of their peers as they explore the possibility of carrying through on the development of a product or service. The concept is validated by their peers and the by the
instructor. The purpose is to facilitate the development of a project for the student with the support of peers and professors. The student will be pushed to recognize opportunities and shape them into business concepts that have a chance to thrive. They will be encouraged to look largely at developing a new product or service, but may also consider either developing a new or underserved market for an existing product or service, or developing new channels to market
for an existing product or service. This course is run concurrently with 410-E55-LA (Business Plan Laboratory) to allow for the creation of a draft business plan.

Complementary

Physical Education

Purchasing & Inventory for Startups

This course introduces students to purchasing and supply management as it applies to start-ups. In general usage, the
term purchasing describes the process of buying: learning of a need, locating and selecting a supplier, negotiating a price
and other pertinent terms, and following up to ensure delivery. Inventory refers to the planning, organizing, motivating,
and controlling of all those activities principally concerned with the flow of materials into an organization. Essentially, it tells you as an owner how much stock you have at any one time, and how you keep track of it. This course will look
inventory control of stock at every stage of the production process, from purchase and delivery to using and re-ordering
the stock with the goal of ensuring that a start-up has the right amount of stock in the right place at the right time and
that capital is not tied up unnecessarily.

Doing Business in Quebec

The distinct culture, language and legal system present unique opportunities and challenges for doing business in Quebec.
This course provides an overview of the laws, practices, and regulations that affect doing business in Quebec.

Personal Branding for Entrepreneurs

This course introduces the personal branding concept and helps students learn how to successfully promote the most
important brand of all: themselves. The course provides students with the knowledge, skills and attitudes to market
themselves either to an employer to gain rewarding employment or to clients to help promote product / services. Topics
include key concepts of personal branding; social media and personal branding; tools and techniques for career management and for on-going personal brand maintenance.

Incubator 2: Planning Phase

This is a follow-up course to Incubator 1. In this course, students take the idea or concept that they found in the first
course and perform a feasibility analysis and assessment of it prior to creating a business plan. Students will be focused on the analysis of their idea, concentrating on the details of their business proposal. After conducting secondary market research, students will do primary market research by talking directly to stakeholders of all kinds – from potential customers to future team members – about their business concept. Their final business plan (which addresses details) will be analysed by their peers and instructor.

Incubator 3: Launch Phase / Externship

This is a follow-up course to Incubator 2. In this course, students engage in the business launch phase: they marshal the
resources they need to launch their business. Students may work in tandem with classmates or, in the case of a concept
involving an existing business, with the business owner of that existing business. For students who do not intend to launch their own concept after graduation, they have the option of working for a small- to medium-size business that is currently in the launch phase of a new product/service or of the company. This course is equivalent to a workstudy.

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