Creation of Business Opportunities

Important note: This course is part of a 6 ECTS module consisting of two courses "Entrepreneurship” & “Creation of Business Opportunities”, which have to be taken together in one semester.

Start-ups are temporary, team-based organizations, which can form both within and outside of established companies, to pursue one central objective: taking a new venture idea to market by designing a business model that can be scaled to a full-grown company.

In this course, students will form start-up teams around self-selected ideas and run through the process just like real start-ups would do in the first three months of intensive work. Start-up Engineering takes an incremental and iterative approach, in that it favours variety and alternatives over one detailed, linear five-year business plan to reach steady state operations. From a problem solving and systems thinking perspective, student teams create different possible versions of a new venture and alternative hypotheses about value creation for customers and value capture vis-à-vis competitors. We will draw on recent scientific findings about international success factors of new venture design. To test critical hypotheses early on, student teams engage in scientific, evidence-based, experimental trial-and-error learning process that measures real progress.

Learning Outcomes:

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Apply a modern innovation toolkit relevant in both the corporate & start-up world
• Analyse given business opportunities in terms of its constituent elements
• Design new business models by gathering and combining relevant ideas, facts and information
• Evaluate business opportunities and derive judgment about next steps & decisions

Content:

Lecture Topics:

1. The Management of (Technological) Innovation
2. Strategy and Organization for Innovation
3. Managing the Innovation Process
4. Innovation in the Age of Circular Economy (C2C)
5. Market-Research for Innovation and Design-thinking
6. Capturing value from R&D, Open Innovation and IP
7. Creativity and mindfulness in Innovation

# Entrepreneurship

In this course, students will form start-up teams around self-selected ideas and run through the process just like real start-ups would do in the first three months of intensive work. Start-up Engineering takes an incremental and iterative approach, in that it favours variety and alternatives over one detailed, linear five-year business plan to reach steady state operations. From a problem solving and systems thinking perspective, student teams create different possible versions of a new venture and alternative hypotheses about value creation for customers and value capture vis-à-vis competitors. We will draw on recent scientific findings about international success factors of new venture design. To test critical hypotheses early on, student teams engage in scientific, evidence-based, experimental trial-and-error learning process that measures real progress.

Learning Outcomes:

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to: ·

• Apply a modern innovation toolkit relevant in both the corporate & start-up world
• Analyse given business opportunities in terms of its constituent elements
• Design new business models by gathering and combining relevant ideas, facts and information
• Evaluate business opportunities and derive judgment about next steps & decisions

Content:

Lecture Topics:

1. The Management of (Technological) Innovation
2. Strategy and Organization for Innovation
3. Managing the Innovation Process
4. Innovation in the Age of Circular Economy (C2C)
5. Market-Research for Innovation and Design-thinking
6. Capturing value from R&D, Open Innovation and IP
7. Creativity and mindfulness in Innovation