#idp 155

For starters, Interterm is Smith’s J-Term. For those unfamiliar with the term J-Term, it’s basically an optional academic term held during the month of January. During this time, students can be at Smith at no additional cost. During Interterm, athletes are back for practices and other students are back to take classes or just to hang out with friends and enjoy Northampton. The courses offered tend to be one or two credits opposed to the normal four.  

This year, I decided to take Entrepreneurship I: Introduction to Entrepreneurship (IDP 155) and Entrepreneurship II: Entrepreneurship in Action (IDP 156). Each course was a week-long, worth one-credit, and graded Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory (S/U). The courses met from 9-12 and had an hour or less of homework per day. One day, the course ran an extra hour so that Smith alumna Margaret Nyamumbo ‘11 could tell us about her Kenyan coffee business, Kahawa 1893. To read more about her story, click here. I decided to take these courses because they seemed interesting and applicable to my major. Furthermore, many of the other Interterm courses are hard to get into as a first-year due to the caps. 

Our precourse homework for IDP 155 was to respond to the following prompt: “Reflect on your desired impact on the world, that is, what motivates and drives you?”. I think this is a valuable exercise for anyone. On the first day of class, we were introduced to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). From there, we used our precourse reflections to select an SDG of interest and ultimately to form teams. My team focused on quality education (SDG 4). 

Once teams were formed, we brainstormed profitable businesses that we could create to address the problem at hand. From there, we narrowed our focus and pitched our initial idea. Throughout the week we received feedback from peers and the instructors. We used this feedback along with tools like the Idea Napkin and the Value Proposition Canvas to improve our idea. Through the lecture portion, we learned about different types of entrepreneurs, effectuation, and creating an entrepreneurial mindset. IDP 155 culminated with each team pitching their ideas to the class and a few guests. Finally, each person got the chance to invest (fake money) into the other ventures. 

In IDP 156, we used tools like the SWOT Analysis and the Business Model Canvas to further develop our ventures from IDP 155. Specifically, we got more into the finances of our ventures. For homework, we learned more about entrepreneurship through case studies. In class, we also did some fun activities unrelated to our specific ventures. For instance, my team had 5 minutes to come up with a pitch for “steelwool sweaters” while another team had to pitch “cardboard umbrellas”. The lesson was that no idea is a bad idea. Like IDP 155, IDP 156 culminated in final (vastly improved) pitches and a round of investing. In summary, IDP 155 and IDP 156 together serve as a project-based crash course in entrepreneurship. A key takeaway is that entrepreneurial skills are powerful in business, but also applicable to many other fields.