Teaching Entrepreneurship in Computer Science: Lessons Learned

Many Computer Science departments are offering courses in Entrepreneurship. Views vary widely on the purpose, appropriateness and value of this as a topic area for students majoring in Computer Science - hence the title of this paper. We begin by exploring the meaning of the term, and review representative examples of Entrepreneurship programs in different Computer Science departments, looking at their stated goals and outcomes. We then describe our own experience designing and teaching a new, two-part, yearlong course on "Software Entrepreneurship" at Brandeis University, we extensively explore important lessons learned from this experience. Our program includes two interlocking courses, one focused on the "discovery stage" and one focused on the "delivery stage". We briefly describe the structure, learning objectives and overall flow of the courses. We then examine, in turn, a series of common challenges and our solutions and innovations in each: a) forming well-functioning student teams; b) choosing the appropriate size of teams; c) catalyzing innovation in the student teams; d) encouraging positive team dynamics and dealing with crises; e) defining the final deliverable; and f) deploying outside experts and g) assessments at the end of the course. To get a handle on the effectiveness of our approach we present a selection of student written reflections on their experience, how they felt it impacted them, and to what extent they see entrepreneurship in their own future. We conclude by identifying two broad areas for future work and study.