Technology Entrepreneurship
6 ECTS Module for Master Students
Credits
- 6 ECTS module
- 2 courses
Entrepreneurship&Creation of Business Opportunities
Instructor(s)
Overview
Startups are temporary, team-based organizations, which can form independently, but also within established companies. They pursue one central objective: taking a business idea to market by finding and designing a repeatable and scalable business model. This entrepreneurial process involves gathering and combining resources that you do not (yet) possess and dealing with high uncertainty about what combinations of resources actually generate value. This course module is designed to introduce students to a systematic Startup Engineering approach to master the process of taking a business idea to market in light of resource contraints and uncertainty.
Startup Engineering takes an iterative approach, in that it favors variety and alternatives over one detailed, linear five-year business plan to reach steady state operations. From a problem solving and systems thinking perspective, Startup Engineers create different possible versions of a new venture and alternative hypotheses about value creation for customers and value capture vis-à-vis competitors. To test critical hypotheses early on, Startup Engineers engage in an evidence-based, experimental trial-and-error learning process that measures real progress.
The workflow in this course module is comprised of three elements:
- (Flipped) classroom: learning about and discussing concepts and tools currently prevailing in theory and practice of modern technology entrepreneurship.
- Problem-based learning: deepen an understanding of the concepts and tools by seeing them applied and applying them to real company cases.
- Experiential learning: applying the concepts and tools in teams to an own new startup project.
Students are invited to apply to this course module already with a startup idea and/ or team, but this is not a requirement. We will form teams and ideas in the beginning of the course.
Objectives
Upon completion of this course module, students will be able to:
- Apply a modern innovation toolkit relevant in both the startup & corporate world
- Analyze 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
This course module can prepare students for the following career paths:
- Startup founder
- Early employee in a startup
- New business development in established corporations
- Venture capital investing
Grading
50%(team): Development and pitch of an own startup project - This is a combination of your intermediate and final pitches. We especially look at the usage of frameworks presented in the course materials as well as form and presentation style.30%(team): Three case solutions (one from each of the three parts of the course) - The focus will be on evaluating the clarity and coherence of the reasoning process that led to the conclusion. Each group must thoroughly detail the steps and logic they employed to ensure their analytical approach is both transparent and replicable.20%(individual): Class participation - Ensuring that each group member is actively contributing towards lecture and exercise sessions and presents a part of each pitch.
Target Audience
- Master Students in IWI, LIM & GTIME
- Master Students in Engineering
- Master Students in Erasmus Programs
Due to capacity constraints, the course Creation of Business Opportunities is duplicated in three parallel sessions.
Time & Location
Entrepreneurship (Lecture): Monday, 13.15 - 14.45, Building I, Audimax 2Creation of Business Opportunities (PBL I): Monday, 15.00 - 17.15, Building A, Room A 0.19Creation of Business Opportunities (PBL II): Monday, 15.00 - 17.15, Harburger Schloßstrasse 28, Room HS28 - 0.01Creation of Business Opportunities (PBL III): Monday, 15.00 - 17.15, Harburger Schloßstrasse 28, Room HS28 - 0.08
Registration
- Please register for the entire module
Technology Entrepreneurshiphere: e-learning.tuhh.de/studip
Course Notes & Materials
Access to course notes & materials here.
Preliminary Schedule
| Session | Date | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | April 8th | Introduction (Online Session) |
| 2 | April 15th | Customer Segmentation |
| 3 | April 22nd | Technology & Product Development |
| 4 | April 29th | Competition & Market Analysis |
| 5 | May 6th | Intermediate Pitches I |
| 6 | May 13th | (Platform) Business Models |
| - | May 20th | Holiday |
| 7 | May 27th | Revenue Models & Pricing |
| 8 | June 3rd | Lean Startup & Experimentation |
| 9 | June 10th | Intermediate Pitches II |
| 10 | June 17th | Marketing for Startup Growth |
| 11 | June 24th | Sales for Startup Growth |
| 12 | July 1st | Financial Analysis |
| 13 | July 8th | Final Pitches |
Prof. Dr. Christoph Ihl
Professor & Head of Institute
My research interests include cultural entrepreneurship, social networks and natural language processing.
Oliver Specht
Research Assistant & Doctoral Student
My research interests are technology entrepreneurship and venture capital financing.
Jürgen Christopher Thiesen
Research Assistant & Doctoral Student
My research interests include the wide field of green technologies and sustainable entrepreneurship.
Jonas Wilinski
Research Assistant & Doctoral Student
My research interests span across the wide field of AI and Machine Learning in combination with managerial and cultural implications.