Find your perfect college degree
Enrolling in an entrepreneurship major is a wise idea, although some people find it unnecessary. After all, so many people became successful business owners and managers without a degree, let alone a major in entrepreneurship.
But what if you find it essential to focus extra on this field? This is where a business or entrepreneurship degree becomes more appropriate.
Everybody has a unique aptitude for a subject or discipline, but if you are willing to learn, you can learn practically any skill. The world today is filled with uncertainties. The future, whether we like it or not, belongs to innovators and creators. Thus, it’s essential to study entrepreneurship.
Courses in this field will serve as the best foundation for innovative and creative ideas that we all need to succeed in the 21st century.
12 Free Online Entrepreneurship Classes
Like many students who dream of building their company one day, an entrepreneurship program should be on top of your list so you can achieve your goals. Below are 12 free online entrepreneurship courses you might want to try.
How to Start Your Own Business
Michigan State University, via Coursera
This is a free online specialization class that will guide you into doing your own business. It covers a wide range of topics essential for a company to succeed: mindset, creativity, action, planning, and strategy.
Plus, you will learn the theories of putting up a business and be guided through the whole process of actually putting up a business.
In the capstone course, all the tools and lessons discussed previously are brought together so you can launch your business.
Whether the business plan on your capstone course is your dream business or not, the goal here is that you should be able to come up with an operating company. The course should be able to help you start and execute something that you are passionate about.
This course has six specializations:
Course No. 1: Developing An Entrepreneurial Mindset: First Step Towards Success. This course gives you the right insights to re-frame your thinking to maximize your chances for success.
Course No. 2: The Search for Great Ideas: Harnessing Creativity to Empower Innovation. This is where you will discover how you can use observational techniques and tools for idea generation. You will also learn how you can distinguish good ideas from bad ones.
Course No. 3: Planning: Principles, Proposing, Proofing, and Practicing to a Success Plan. Course three is where you are guided through the whole process of testing and validating your business assumptions systematically. You will learn what value your business will offer to whom and how this will make money.
Course No. 4: Structure: Building the Frame for Business Growth. This is where you will deal with the everyday issues you, as an entrepreneur, are expected to face as you make your business framework.
Course No. 5: 5 Steps to Capstone Experience. This prepares you for your capstone experience. You will document all the details you need before you launch your business.
Course 6: Capstone- Launch Your Own Business. This is where you will take action and put the skills and concepts you learned into an actual business.
Best Features:
- 100% online and free
- Shareable Certificate
- Flexible Schedules
- Suitable for Beginners
- It takes eight hours to complete (at three hours per week)
Entrepreneurial Finance: Strategy and Innovation Specialization
Duke University, via Coursera
This specialization course by Duke University and is ideal for intermediate learners. As a student in the class, you will learn how to boost your business innovations and obtain helpful insights from the university’s Fuqua School of Business.
This course is ideal for entrepreneurs as well as business executives who wish to learn how to evaluate entrepreneurial ventures using models in Excel spreadsheets.
This course has four specializations:
Course 1: Startup Valuation Methods. This is where you will learn about the fundamental tools for valuing companies, like using Excel’s discounted cash flow analysis. You will also learn how you can apply this to your future business venture.
Course 2: Financing for Startup Businesses. This teaches you how to carry out the financing strategy of a startup. You will also learn how to create capitalization tables in Excel.
Course 3: Blockchain Models. You will learn more about blockchain and how it can give value to cryptocurrencies and other practical applications.
Course 4: Financial Risk Management with R. Course 4 teaches you how to compute the return of a portfolio of securities and quantify the potential market risk of the said portfolio.
Best Features:
- 100% online and free
- Shareable Certificate
- Flexible Schedules
- Suitable for Intermediate learners (some related experience required)
- Four months to complete ( three hours per week)
- 5 of the best professors in the industry
Entrepreneurship: Growing Your Business Specialization
The University of Virginia, via Coursera
This course was developed by the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and is led by some of Darden’s top-ranked faculties. It covers the many challenges private businesses encounter, especially when a portfolio’s potential market risk is trying to grow exponentially.
Once enrolled, you will learn business owners’ basic financial accounting skills, like making and reading cash flows, balance sheets, or income statements in making financial health conclusions.
This course comes in four types:
Course No. 1: Financial Accounting Fundamentals. Concise videos, various activities, and financial records of different businesses are used to let you understand the basics of financial accounting in this course. You are also taught about the most commonly used financial statements: the Balance Sheet, Income Statement, and Statement of Cash Flow.
Course No. 2: Ethical Leadership Through Giving Voice to Values. This is where you will develop the many methods and techniques of enacting and voicing your principles and values.
Course No. 3: New Models of Business in Society. The course talks about the emergence of new models of business.
Course No. 4: Innovating with the Business Model Canvas. You will learn about the primary tools from the worlds of design thinking so you can approach the business canvas with focus and thoughtfulness.
Best Features:
- 100% online and free
- Shareable Certificate
- Flexible Deadlines
- Suitable for Beginners
- It takes four months to complete (two hours per week)
Becoming an Entrepreneur
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, via edX
This course is designed in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to help guide everybody (regardless of age and background) through the complicated process of founding a company.
This engaging and informative course provides you with the inspiration you need to explore your potential in entrepreneurship. You will also discover the tools and path to overcome the common setbacks of building a business.
Becoming an Entrepreneur follows the successful approach of LaunchX through lean methodologies and design thinking. What’s great about this free course is that you don’t have entrepreneurship experience to join.
A combination of activities and short videos will also help you get into the real world and make a real impact.
Best Features:
- 100% online and free
- Optional upgrade available
- Self-paced
- Six weeks to complete (1-3 hours per week)
- Handled by MIT Professor Martin Culpepper and LaunchX Founder and Executive Director Laurie Stach
E-Marketing
University of California, Irvine, via Coursera
In this specialization course, you will discover the constantly evolving channels and platforms of digital marketing. You will also learn to build and define an audience through search engine marketing, social media, and website optimization.
Other things you gain from this course include:
- Identifying the latest landscape of the digital business environments and recognizing the different strategies to attract, define, or engage your online audience
- Creating a digital marketing plan to meet your objectives and goals for your business (new or existing), products, and services
- Applying analytics to boost your marketing efforts
Best Features:
- 100% online and free
- Flexible Schedule
- Shareable Certificate
- Three months to complete (three hours per week)
- Suitable for beginners
Pricing Strategy Optimization
The University of Virginia, via Coursera
This is a free specialization course that teaches you helpful ways of increasing price realization and maximizing profits. You will also understand how you can leverage customer value knowledge to develop an effective pricing strategy.
This specialization has four courses:
Course No. 1: Cost and Economics in Pricing Strategy. This demonstrates the economic factors of pricing based on the pros and cons of a cost-based pricing approach. You will also learn more about marginal cost-plus pricing, peak-load pricing, and index-based pricing.
Course No. 2: Customer Value in Pricing Strategy. This course teaches you how products are priced based on how your buyers value them, plus the psychology behind your customer’s buying decisions.
Course No. 3: Market and Competition in Pricing Strategy. In this course, students learn about competitive pricing and avoid the common legal pitfalls concerning market-based pricing. You are also taught how to influence, predict, and respond to the pricing moves of your competitors.
Course 4: Pricing Strategy in Practice. Here, you will walk through a real-world case. You will use three lenses (customer value, competition, and cost) to reach an optimal price, and from there, adjust to market disruptions.
Best Features:
- 100% online and free
- Shareable Certificate
- Flexible schedule
- Suitable for beginners
- Takes four months to complete (three hours per week)
Technology Entrepreneurship: Lab to Market
Harvard University, via edX
This is an introductory course where you, as an entrepreneur, can match the most recent technologies with your customers’ needs so you can successfully launch a new business. Real-world examples are used, and you get to learn about how founders, industry experts, and funders venture their creation process.
In this course, you will also learn:
- The right systematic approach to entrepreneurship technology
- How to come up with new scenarios by matching the needs of your customers to potential technology seeds
- Aligning operating and business models
- Evaluating a technology to check if it is ready and market fit
Best Features:
- 100% online and free
- Optional upgrade available
- Self-paced
- Paid Certificates available
- Takes five weeks to complete (2-4 hours per week)
Leading the Modern Day Business
The University of Virginia, via Coursera
This course covers the fundamental concepts and skills of a dynamic enterprise. It talks about digital transformations and introduces you to design thinking that gives you the tools to become more innovative. You will also learn skills that will help you discover creative opportunities in every type of organization.
You will also:
- Learn to utilize a digital transformation framework for digitizing your organization.
- Understand what design thinking is and when you can use it.
- Apply actionable and relevant analytics to your design program.
- Generate ideas and identify which ones can produce your desired outcomes.
Best Features:
- 100% online and free
- Flexible Schedule
- Shareable Certificate
- Ideal for beginners
- Takes four months to complete (at two hours per week)
Legal Aspects of Entrepreneurship
The University of Maryland, via Coursera
The University of Maryland offers this three-course specialization class, and you will learn:
- How to have a clear understanding of all the legal aspects of entrepreneurship that present challenges and opportunities in your company creation and launch
- How to make, protect, and manage copyrights, patents, trade secrets, and trademarks for your company, products, and services.
- Identify why agreements and legal contracts are suitable for business activities and how you can negotiate and develop contracts.
- Understand how the law can influence the success of your company.
The three courses of this specialization include:
Course 1: Legal Foundations for Entrepreneurs. It starts with an introduction to the nature of law and modern legal sources and systems. It also includes the types of legal activities you can pursue on your own versus how and when to choose and work with a lawyer.
Course 2: Intellectual Property for Entrepreneurs. Intellectual Property is an often misunderstood element of law and entrepreneurship. This course teaches you how to make and manage patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets that will play a crucial role in your business’s success.
Course 3: Legal Contracts and Agreements for Entrepreneurs. This discusses how a legal contract can impede or impact the success of a budding business.
Best Features:
- 100% online and free
- Shareable Certificate
- Flexible Schedule
- Suitable for Beginners
- Takes three months to complete (2 hours per week)
Social Impact Strategy: Tools for Entrepreneurs and Innovators
The University of Pennsylvania, via Coursera
This is an introduction to social entrepreneurship and social impact strategy and includes an overview of this field, concepts, and tools to help you jumpstart your business ventures.
The course has four stages: Define, Design, Pilot, and Scale, and enables you to turn your passion into stable plans for introducing a non-profit venture designed to hit your social goal.
You will also learn how to think through your problems systematically; create and test an ingenious solution, and assess competitions, risks, and performance. Course completers qualify for an in-person educational experience called GSIH (Global Social Impact House).
In this 7-day in-house program, you are given the tools, training, and community to further your ventures.
Best Features:
- 100% online and free
- Shareable Certificate
- Flexible deadline
- Takes 8 hours to complete
Essentials of Entrepreneurship: Thinking and Action
The University of California, Irvine, via Coursera
This is a free interactive course that gives you how to succeed in an entrepreneurial opportunity.
The topics of this course include business strategies for new businesses, how feasibility, opportunity, and creativity are evaluated, how to achieve in your new business, and the importance of having a business plan.
By the time you complete this course, you will be more confident in starting a business and become more enterprising in approaching your roles if you wish to work in different organizations.
Other things you will learn include:
- Identify business opportunities and develop these into potential business ideas.
- Recognizing a business process and learning how to manage it
- Using entrepreneurial concepts, approaches, and methods
- Knowing operational challenges used in doing new business ventures
Best Features:
- 100% online and free
- Shareable Certificate
- Flexible deadline
- Takes 5 hours to complete
Customer Value in Pricing Strategy
The University of Virginia, via Coursera
This course will show you how you can set a price on a product based on how your clients value it. You will also have a deeper understanding of the psychology behind a customer’s buying decisions.
What you will learn from this course are:
- How you can influence value-based pricing techniques to make the right pricing decisions.
- Measure a customer’s willingness to pay via models (conjoint, surveys, analysis, and other data).
- Understand consumer psychology in setting prices that benefit both the sellers and the consumers.
Best Features:
- 100% online and free
- Shareable Certificate
- Flexible deadlines
- Takes 15 hours to complete
Today, our current society benefits a lot from entrepreneurship. Nowadays, learning and studying the art of entrepreneurship is more accessible than most think, thanks to online courses and free interactive lectures offered by some of the country’s top colleges and universities.
As a business owner, it is just fair to equip yourself with the necessary training. Enroll in suitable entrepreneurship courses now and develop a more entrepreneurial mind to help you hit your big business goals.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Entrepreneurship?
“An entrepreneur is someone who jumps off a cliff and builds a plane on the way down,” according to Reid Hoffman, a venture capitalist, and Internet entrepreneur. Though it may sound funny and entertaining, this is on-point and correct.
Entrepreneurship is the concept of creating and overseeing a business operation to gain profit by taking possible risks in the business world. It is your willingness to start a new business venture. Entrepreneurship has so many critical roles in the development of an economically expanding global market.
How do you become a successful entrepreneur?
An entrepreneur has the passion, the drive, the desire, and the goal to create and materialize a product or service so that it becomes available to the public. At the same time, he/she secures his material wealth along the way. To become an entrepreneur, go to great lengths regarding your time and efforts.
In many cases, most business people already have a clear idea of what they want to pursue even before drafting a business plan. While many people are born with the best entrepreneurial traits, anybody can become a successful businessman.
Just remember the two holy grails of entrepreneurship: action and execution. So what characteristics should you have to become a successful entrepreneur?
- Leadership Quality. Defining the word “leader” is often challenging because the term is comprehensive. Being a leader means you need to have exemplary managerial and interpersonal skills. But what makes you a great leader is the experience of taking charge of your people, guiding them, and walking with them toward a common goal. As a leader, you should be there to plan, drive, evaluate, and mentor your staff and employees.
- Self-Confidence. How confident you are with your skills as an entrepreneur will make or break your business success. If you second guess your capacities and decisions, do you think your team will even trust you? When you lack self-confidence, the morale of your colleagues, team members, and subordinates is compromised. This can significantly dent your plans of achieving a successful venture in the long run.
- Technical Skills and Knowledge. If you’re developing a product, you must religiously maintain the needed skills to deliver your product. Having the right professional and technical skills will stand you in good stead. Read books, attend seminars, and explore more room for improvement to be ahead of your competitors.
- When you begin your own business, you need to have a good and stable business plan. Think about what venture you’re interested in. Study the risks involved in the investment. Be prepared and open about making mistakes, and be determined to work and try hard.
- Good communication skills. An entrepreneur must be an effective communicator. Whether you’re a sole businessman or run a Fortune 500 company, you need practical communication skills because these will come in handy when you talk to your stakeholders and your customers, peers, creditors, and mentors. If you lack good communication skills and you fail to communicate your company’s value, there’s a high risk of your company not being successful in the field.
It also helps master all the different forms of communication, like group conversations, one-on-one and in-person conversations, emails, written communication, or online messages.
Good sales pitch. A good sales pitch and the best communication skills go hand in hand to make a business venture successful.
As an entrepreneur, your goal is to sell anything and everything you have to offer. You need to sell your business ideas to possible investors and your products or services to your potential customers. If you have practical communication skills, it will be easier to sell your products and ideas.
Naturally, entrepreneurs have to be good salespeople at first. This skill is crucial as it will demonstrate value for stakeholders both outside and inside the company.
Keen focus. The way to having successful entrepreneurship is not all beds and roses. It is riddled with so many ups and downs.
Sometimes you succeed, and sometimes there are setbacks. Your focus must remain on your course even when things do not go as planned. Remember that one of the toughest challenges in entrepreneurship is emotional instability. You should learn how to deal with these things to be on top of the game.
It’s challenging to remain focused, especially when setbacks happen. Regardless of the struggles in entrepreneurship, you need to stay transparent with those things and concentrate keenly on your end goal.
The ability to learn. Whether you are a career person, an entrepreneur, or a student, one of life’s most essential skills is your capacity to learn. In the business field, especially, learning is necessary for success. The ups and downs of any business are inevitable. Thus, you need that strong desire to learn.
If you can learn something in any situation and are open to learning even more, this will be your key to becoming a successful entrepreneur someday. After all, failures will help you expand your understanding and knowledge of business, right?
The right business strategy. By definition, a successful entrepreneur has successfully built a company. In any business venture, the right business strategy is the fifth most crucial skill every entrepreneur needs. More often than not, entrepreneurs achieve business success through their determination, strength of will, and the right strategy for their business.
When you combine sales skills, effective communication skills, your determination to learn, and a deep focus on your goals, you can learn business strategies on the fly. However, keep in mind that your growth and structure strategy is based on the relevant business skills and sense you employ. It is hard work, but it can be done.
Why is entrepreneurship important in college?
Entrepreneurship is booming by the day. Many startup companies are gaining traction across the globe, attracting customers and capital. Because there’s exciting growth in entrepreneurship, academic programs related to the field are making their way to different colleges and universities.
Whether you are still contemplating what program to major in college or you are already running your own company, here are some compelling lessons on why enrolling in an entrepreneurship class is a wise decision.
- It builds your network. No matter what your role is, a startup venture is very challenging. It is time-consuming, and tiring, and at times, it doesn’t yield any positive results. This can bring your spirits down, especially if you are doing it all alone. But when you are in school, you can seek the help of your faculty and professors, and they’d be more willing to sit down and discuss things with you.
Professors can help you in touch with a few friendly faces in the industry. They can advise you on what to do, where to go, who to talk to, and who to call for more help. Having unique connections with your professors is never a bad idea.
- You will know what you are doing. No matter how passionate you are about your pet project, this means nothing if you don’t know how to use your project to its full potential. When you are enrolled in an entrepreneurship class, the people behind these programs (faculty, professors) have tried, succeeded, and failed in their respective fields. Because of these experiences, they know how they can help you to move forward.
- Practice is quite expensive. When starting your own company, it’s essential to make mistakes at some point. After all, progression, growth, and success are rooted in learning and discovering what will and will not work for you. But through entrepreneurship classes, you get to know what to expect.
You are in an entrepreneurship class because the professors teach you important things that will help you become the best entrepreneur. “Practicing” business is financially, socially, and emotionally expensive; that’s why classes are there so you will avoid these costs.
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