The entrepreneurship major prepares students for the intricacies of planning, launching and leading a new business with a focus on creativity and innovation, new venture planning, entrepreneurial finance and managing and growing a new business. The curriculum is designed around two themes: screening and recognizing opportunities to create value, and personal innovation despite scarce organizational resources.

Students of the program, in their first major required course, develop a feasibility study for a new venture, which is then used in subsequent courses. The study is worked into a business plan in the program's capstone course, ENT 487 Business Plan Development. Tampa Bay entrepreneurs critique these business plans in a local competition and the best ones are forwarded to national competitions.

UT's entrepreneurship program fosters the kind of outside-the-box thinking that prepares majors for success in a variety of endeavors. Self-employment is only one career option for graduates of the entrepreneurship concentration. Graduates have started new businesses, bought existing ventures, and gone on to entrepreneurial positions in profit and not-for-profit ventures around the world. Other career options are intrapreneurship (innovation in large organizations), venture capital, and social entrepreneurship.

Many entrepreneurship graduates have also continued their education through UT's MBA program, which offers a concentration in entrepreneurship, and at universities across the country.

Topics of Study

• Developing an entrepreneurial mind-set
• Indentifying business opportunities
• Conducting marketing research to understand the target market
• Identifying financial needs and acquiring funding
• Maintaining liquidity and managing cash flow
• Understanding the role of entrepreneurship in international business 

Minor in Entrepreneurship

A minor in entrepreneurship is available to any University of Tampa student who wants to be an entrepreneur or think like one. Courses in the minor offer the opportunity to combine an entrepreneurial mindset with the management skills necessary to launch and build a successful venture, whether the student is driven by an idea, a passion for vocation or the rewards of building an entrepreneurial organization. Adding an entrepreneurship minor to any major offers a powerful set of skills and competencies useful throughout a life that might encompass several positions and even several careers across a wide variety of organizations. This unique set of skills will be attractive to employers as well as prepare students for launching a new venture immediately after graduation or years later.