Neue Vorlesung im SoSe 2018 – Craft Beverage Entrepreneurship

Economic developers often tout the craft, or artisanal sector as a viable career path during recessions. While craft entrepreneurship is often seen as a means of socioeconomic advancement for low-wealth or undereducated individuals, this view downplays the opportunities craft entrepreneurship offers—both to artisanally inclined, and the overall economy. For example, in the United States in 2016, the craft beer industry segment alone contributed $67.8 billion to the U.S. economy, and created more than 456,000 jobs (Brewers Association).

This course examines the challenges and opportunities inherent to craft entrepreneurship. However, rather than focus on the broader craft sector, we will focus exclusively on the creation of craft breweries. Focusing our learning on a specific type of venture allows us to do a “deep dive” into the nuance and operational detail of new venture creation. To guide our inquiry, the course will utilize as an overarching framework the concepts of opportunity discovery, evaluation, and exploitation; and effectual reasoning.

The major objectives are:

• Demonstrate the tradeoffs an entrepreneur must make in starting a new business

• Provide an understanding of what it takes to create an organization from scratch

• Explore making decisions based on incomplete information and uncertainty

• Understand the financing of craft breweries (raising funds; making production and sales projections)

• Understand the legal and regulatory environment related to craft breweries (USA)

• Introduction to branding, marketing, and sales issues (etc.)

The course language is English and no prior knowledge of business courses is mandatory. You can also take this course as equivalent to the module „Entrepreneurship & Entrepreneurial Finance“. For more information, please refer to the course outline (wird in neuem Tab geöffnet) . Please contact Daniel Dilmetz (dilmetz@ent.tu-darmstadt.de) for further details.