“How to outsource” – a course where you have to build something (that actually works) using only offshore teams or individuals.
Syllabus is simple. Give each student $500 in credit on eLance/oDesk and let ‘er rip. Students can pool resources to build bigger/cooler stuff or they can go it alone. Throw in a mentor or two who have run some serious but scrappy outsourced dev projects to help people when they start flailing.
Benefits to the students are huge:
– They learn how to hire, fire, and manage freelancers. Lots of MBAs have zero management experience so this is a good training ground for those all important ‘HR’ like functions.
– They learn some of the tools of distributed development (e.g. Github, Trello).
– They’ll learn what is possible to build based on the $ constraints (i.e. What can $500 ‘really’ buy you).
– There will be wide variance in the quality and cost of the final products. Therefore, lots of ‘lessons learned’.
– Just maybe they build something super cool that they can keep working on or build into a real venture.
Benefits to the startup ecosystem: More ideas that can be tested, more products that can be built, and less people giving up on entrepreneurship.