This year the Lester Center has undertaken several important initiatives to support Entrepreneurship education across the Berkeley campus. Most significant of these is a major undertaking with the College of Letters and Sciences to create an opportunity for the broad spectrum of L&S students to get exposed to the energy and opportunity of entrepreneurial careers. The first offering in what will ultimately be a rich curriculum is a seminar for freshmen and sophomores, L&S 5. Taught by experienced entrepreneur, and Lester Center faculty member Rob Matjeles, the course will feature a number of luminary guest speakers including Trip Hawkins, founder of Electronic Arts among others.

L&S 5 Introduction to Entrepreneurship is designed for freshmen and sophomores who wish to know about entrepreneurship, its importance to our society, and its role in bringing new ideas to market. Students will understand the entrepreneurial business process and how they might become involved in those processes in their future careers -- in whatever direction those careers might lead.

This class will explore the structure and framework of entrepreneurial endeavors -- both inside and outside the business world. The course will answer questions such as: What is entrepreneurship? What is opportunity recognition and selection? How can you create and define competitive advantage? How can you think about people in the entrepreneurial context? How can you garner support (financial and other) for an entrepreneurial venture? What do you do when nothing works as planned? And, how do you focus on doing right and doing well?

This class is expected to be highly interactive and dynamic. Almost every class will feature a guest who will have a structured conversation with the instructor, and the students, on the themes and topics derived from the syllabus. The format is expected to be conversational and interactive versus lecture-oriented. Students will be expected to submit questions in advance of classes featuring guests. The guest participants in this class will be entrepreneurs -- founders and leaders of business and non-business enterprises and backers and investors in those enterprises.