STR 3555: Paris Start-Up Strategy
4 elective abroad credits
he purpose of this course is to provide students with an opportunity to understand the entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) of Paris, France.
Through direct interaction with entrepreneurs, capital providers, educators, and government officials in Paris, the students should come away with a new perspective on startup’s opportunities and challenges and get experience consulting to local startups while applying concepts from three books:
• Capital Rising: How Capital Flows Are Changing Business Systems All Over the World, co-authored by Peter S. Cohan and Srini Rangan,
• Startup Cities: Why Only a Few Cities Dominate the Global Startup Scene and What the Rest Should Do About It (March 2018) by Peter S. Cohan, and
• Hungry Startup Strategy: Creating New Ventures with Limited Resources and Unlimited Vision (November 2012) by Peter S. Cohan.
France has not always been known as a haven for start-ups – indeed in recent decades many of France’s greatest entrepreneurs have moved to Silicon Valley. However, in the last few years, France’s economy has stagnated and like other regions in Europe – such as Barcelona and Lisbon – local governments have seen that there is an opportunity to revive the economy by encouraging more entrepreneurial activities. Hence one of the goals of the course is to explore how Paris has created an increasingly vital EE and to give students a first-hand look at the French entrepreneurs and investors who are putting the concept of entrepreneurship into practice.
The Paris Startup Strategy Elective Abroad is intended to provide students with the following benefits:
• To understand how Paris spurs startups
• To get a deeper understanding of Paris’s business culture
• To meet entrepreneurs, business educators, government officials, and capital providers in Paris