Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship Minor

Business Education Engineered

You are a great engineer … but that’s only a part of it. Now gain the skills to set you apart and accelerate your career.

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Expand Your Horizons through Innovation and Entrepreneurship

You’re a great engineer. Now start building the skills you need to become a great employee, leader or founder. By mastering crucial professional and business skills, you will graduate with a competitive edge that accelerates your career from day one.

The Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship Minor is purpose-built for engineers looking to expand their knowledge beyond technical core classes. In 12 credits, you will bridge the gap between pure engineering and real-world viability. The curriculum equips you with essential professional and business skills like project management, leadership and strategic thinking. By mastering these high-demand skills early, you will position yourself to accelerate into management roles, navigate corporate ecosystems and drive impactful solutions throughout your career.

Why choose us?

Not Just for Entrepreneurs

You’ll explore a wide range of topics designed to strengthen your thinking, your problem‑solving and your ability to lead. Skills that carry real value in every career path, no matter where you go next.

Closing the Gap

Nearly one in four executives say they wouldn’t hire today’s entry‑level candidates. This minor gives you direct experience tackling real challenges, helping you build confidence, initiative and the ability to move ideas forward in meaningful ways.

Agility

Only about one‑third of college graduates land in roles tied to their original field of study. Career paths change, industries shift and new opportunities appear. Strengthen your ability to pivot, experiment and lead through those transitions so you’re ready for whatever comes next.

Transform an Idea Into Something Real

Most founders struggle with timing and execution. 90% of startups fail, but not because their idea is bad. Here, you learn how to move an idea forward from professors with firsthand experience.

Faculty Spotlights

Karen Crofton

 

 

Karen Crofton

Professor

The program is led by Karen Crofton, who holds a PhD in engineering education, an MBA and over 20 years of industry experience scaling a venture to over a $300 million valuation. She exemplifies our goal of bringing proven expertise directly to students.


 

David Brown

 

 

David Brown

Professor

David Brown brings deep experience in entrepreneurship and venture creation to CU Boulder. As the co‑founder of Techstars, he has helped launch and support hundreds of startups across the globe, guiding founders through the earliest and most challenging stages of building a company. His leadership reflects our commitment to connecting students with people who have shaped the entrepreneurial landscape at scale.


 

Claudia Bouvier

 

 

Claudia Bouvier

Professor

Claudia Bouvier has spent over 20 years leading projects, building companies and advising founders. She co‑founded Pastificio Boulder and created a consumer-packaged goods brand now sold nationwide and honored for its sustainability and product innovation.


 

Curriculum

Requirements

The Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship Minor (name change in progress from Engineering Entrepreneurship) requires 12 credit hours and is restricted to undergraduate students in the College of Engineering and Applied Science. There are 10 five-week courses and two full semester courses; all courses are one credit. 

All courses are currently Special Topics (EMEN 4830) while we work on getting each course a permanent course number. Please contact emp@colorado.edu to have these courses added to your degree audit as these are not automatically added. If you have questions about requirements or have already taken other courses towards the minor, reach out to emp@colorado.edu. We will honor previously taken EMEN entrepreneurship courses and you can add any of these one credit courses to fulfill the minor.

Entrepreneurship provides a foundation that accelerates success across all engineering career paths. This course explores critical professional competencies, including market research, project management, negotiation, and strategic pitching, to illustrate how business principles drive engineering projects. Students will develop a versatile mindset that enables them to contribute strategically to any professional environment.
Clear communication is a critical requirement for translating engineering innovation into success. This course prepares students to convey complex technical ideas with clarity and impact to non-technical audiences, including investors, customers, and internal stakeholders. Students will master the development of persuasive elevator pitches, strategic outreach materials, and investor updates necessary to secure resources and drive projects forward.
This course equips engineering students with the foundational discovery and analytical skills essential for early-stage innovation. Students will explore structured ideation methodologies to identify market opportunities, apply real-world validation techniques to test concepts efficiently, and study the fundamentals of branding and strategic outreach. By mastering these entrepreneurial frameworks outside of a traditional project-based setting, students learn how to rigorously evaluate the commercial viability of technical ideas before committing engineering resources.
This course introduces students to the critical legal, financial, and regulatory frameworks required to bring technical innovations to market. Students will learn various foundational intellectual property rights including patents, trademarks, and copyrights.  Additionally, the courses covers the fundamentals of capitalization tables, and the strategic trade-offs between debt and equity financing, giving students  the tools to navigate ownership, dilution, and fundraising opportunities confidently.
Students will utilize skill assessments to analyze their own tolerance for ambiguity, develop emotional intelligence competencies, and master the distribution of team roles and responsibilities. By exploring strategies to manage risk and perform effectively within unstructured teams, students will cultivate the adaptive leadership mindset required to drive innovation.
Students will master the Business Model Canvas, differentiate between customer wants and needs, and utilize standard strategic planning exercises. By learning to formulate milestone plans and execute stakeholder engagement strategies, students will acquire the skills required to drive complex engineering projects from concept to execution. 
This course introduces engineering students to the strategic development of prototypes, from low-fidelity concepts to minimum viable products. Students will evaluate various manufacturing methods, execute product testing, and learn frameworks for collecting feedback and documenting design iterations.
Students will learn how to gather, analyze, and leverage data to validate technical concepts and assess market viability. Participants will master professional market research methodologies, define precise customer segments, and quantitatively calculate market availability. Additionally, this course covers structured frameworks for gathering actionable customer feedback and strategic networking techniques to obtain critical insights from industry experts.
Students will practice the fundamentals of financial modeling. Students will learn how to structure, format, and populate a dynamic financial model in Microsoft Excel utilizing industry-standard functions to project the viability of an innovative concept. The curriculum emphasizes the iterative process of refining initial estimates based on data, performing sensitivity analyses, and effectively presenting financial forecasts to key decision-makers and stakeholders.
Students will learn critical frameworks required to launch and position innovative products in competitive markets, examining the components of corporate branding, analyze competitive landscapes to construct precise product positioning statements, and evaluate diverse value-based pricing strategies.
Students will learn organizational navigation, professional alignment, and "managing up" effectively. Rather than focusing on control, the course emphasizes how to build high-trust relationships with managers by understanding their priorities, communicating proactively, and delivering solution-oriented value. Students will master strategies for navigating complex power dynamics, transforming the traditional manager-subordinate relationship into a strategic partnership, and influencing through reciprocity to drive both personal career acceleration and broader organizational success.
Students will examine corporate legal structures to select optimal entities, master the mechanics of formal company formation, and design actionable fundraising and go-to-market launch plans to transition from a concept to an operational company. The course features an intensive, iterative focus on communication, preparing participants to craft investor-ready pitch decks and defend their business cases.

 

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Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. The Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship minor has its own set of classes and is separate from other minors. The Business minor operates through the Leeds Business school while this minor operates through the College of Engineering and Applied Science, Engineering Management Program.

The curriculum is different from the Engineering Management minor which is designed for students to learn about leadership and engineering management systems used in industry application. The Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship minor focuses not only on the entrepreneurial side of engineering, but also the necessary skills for students to learn to be a successful employee, engineer, and leader.

The curriculum is different from the Business minor; the Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship minor focuses on hands on learning with more personal attention to your needs. The content is designed to be taken in any order, and the outcomes are overarching to any direction you take your career.

You can add the minor to your degree plan at any level, but courses are currently open to students that have 57 credits or more. Contact emp@colorado.edu for possible course enrollment if you have less than 57 credits.

To declare the minor, you must be a student in the College of Engineering.

No! Even though our classes are perfect for entrepreneurs who already have an idea and want to learn how to put it into action. We emphasize that all engineers should take our classes along with their technical major classes to accelerate their careers.

We make sure to allow plenty of in-class work time where you can collaborate with other students and work with your professor to better understand the content. The goal is for you to get the most out of your time and resources within the scheduled lecture period.

Yes. Most majors in the College of Engineering and Applied Science allow for our classes to overlap with technical elective requirements. Contact your academic advisor for more information on individual courses and elective requirements for your degree.

Depending on the course, the classes will be taught, in-person, online synchronous and asynchronous. 

No, adding the Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship Minor will not change your tuition rate.

One-credit classes are mostly five-week terms. Depending on the specific classes, you could take three in a row to simulate a regular three-credit class. Our goal with one-credit classes is that students will be able to fit them anywhere in their busy schedules.

To add a minor to your record, please refer to the "Adding or removing an engineering minor" page.

Funding Opportunities

Engineering Excellence Fund



Engineering Excellence Fund

Another opportunity for engineering students that are trying to expand their skills is the Engineering Excellence Fund. This student led club manages $500,000, annually which is allocated to other clubs, senior projects, and faculty initiatives to enhance the lives, culture, and facilities at CU. 

If you are a part of an engineering club or program, you can apply for funding in both the fall and spring cycles. 

Become a member

 

Catalyze CU

Taking the Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship minor fast tracks acceptance into Catalyze CU, the university’s premier business accelerator. This partnership provides student innovators with world-class mentorship and up to $25,000 in equity-free funding to launch their ideas. Over 50% of businesses started at Catalyze CU are still operating today.

Find out more