Strategy for Startups 

Book cover for Entrepreneurship, Choice, and Strategy by Joshua Gans, Erin L. Scott, and Scott Stern.

 

Great ideas can succeed in multiple ways—how do you choose the best path?

 

Join our four-day intensive Strategy for Startups course to sharpen your strategic thinking.

 

This is not a startup-building bootcamp—it’s a deep dive into the critical choices that shape innovation-driven ventures and how to approach them strategically.

 

Whether you're a founder, employee, investor, or advisor, whether you're already on this journey or aspire to be, you'll gain a practical, systematic framework for making smarter decisions and turning ideas into reality.

 

UPCOMING DATES: July 7 – 10, 2025  

LOCATION: TBD

 

Through interactive lectures, case studies, and hands-on exercises, this four-day intensive course introduces a strategic framework for innovation-driven entrepreneurs.

The course focuses on the critical decisions startup founders must make as they launch and scale their businesses, highlighting the balance between experimentation, learning, and core strategic choices to gain a competitive edge.

Course materials are drawn from the book Entrepreneurship, Choice, and Strategy by Joshua Gans, Erin L. Scott, and Scott Stern.

For a preview of the framework, see the HBR article: Strategy for Startups.

By the end of this course, you will gain a deeper understanding of:

  • The role of strategy in a new enterprise and the core strategic choices founders face.
  • The trade-offs between learning/experimentation and strategic commitment.
  • How to structure learning and experimentation to align with an overall entrepreneurial strategy.
  • The integration of organizational choices with a structured process for selecting and executing a go-to-market strategy.
  • Four generic go-to-market strategies and a framework for choosing among them.

This course is part of the Centre for Entrepreneurship’s offerings. For participants seeking further support on their entrepreneurial journey, the CfE also provides co-working space, prototyping labs, mentoring services, and specialized topic workshops.

July 7

 Three 80-min sessions from 9:00 AM – 2:30 PM, including a lunch break.

July 8

 Two 80-min sessions from 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM, and optional office hours between 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM.

July 9

 Three 80-min sessions from 9:00 AM – 2:30 PM, including a lunch break.

July 10

 Two 80-min sessions from 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM, and optional office hours between 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM. 

​Erin ScottErin L. Scott

Senior Lecturer, Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management, Sloan School of Management, MIT

 

Erin L. Scott, PhD, has nearly two decades of academic and practical experience. She helps innovators navigate the journey from idea to commercialization. Her research on startup strategy appears in Harvard Business Review, Management Science, and the new book Entrepreneurship, Choice, and Strategy.

At MIT, Dr. Scott mentors early-stage entrepreneurs and teaches the award-winning Entrepreneurial Strategy (MBA, EMBA) and Entrepreneurial Founding & Teams (MBA) courses.

Before joining MIT Sloan, Dr. Scott was an Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore Business School. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Innovation Policy and the Economy Group. A Kauffman Dissertation Fellowship recipient, she earned her PhD in Strategy from Washington University in St. Louis in 2013. She also holds an MBA-MS from Washington University and a BE in Biomedical Engineering from Vanderbilt University. Previously, she evaluated and consulted for early-stage ventures in medical devices and biotechnology.

Strategy for Startups (2025 Summer Intensive) is free to participate and offered in-person only. Due to limited capacity, the course is by invitation only. 

If you are interested in participating, please submit the form below to indicate your interest and to be considered for an invitation. 

REGISTER YOUR INTEREST IN STRATEGY FOR STARTUPS (2025 Summer Intensive)

Participants are expected to attend all four sessions of the course. If you are unable to attend all sessions, please be sure to indicate how much you expect to attend. If we reach capacity, we will prioritize those who can fully commit. Thank you for your understanding. 

Have a question? 

Please contact entrepreneurship.artsci@utoronto.ca