Bachelor 2021/2022

Technological Entrepreneurship

Type: Compulsory course (Business Informatics)

Area of studies: Business Informatics

Delivered by: Department of Business Informatics

Where: Graduate School of Business

When: 4 year, 3 module

Mode of studies: offline

Open to: students of one campus

Instructors: Zeljko Tekic

Language: English

ECTS credits: 4

Contact hours: 40

Course Syllabus

Abstract

The emergence of novel and powerful technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data analytics, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, and social media has transformed innovation and entrepreneurship in significant ways affecting both, entrepreneurial process and its outcomes. These new technologies significantly accelerated experimentation with business models, opening up new opportunities for entrepreneurs and changing how value is created, delivered and captured. Digital technologies and novel business models every day enable new infrastructure, platforms, products and services, applications, and media content to be created, fertilizing the environment for the growth of startups. These new and fragile global companies – have been started by teams of two to five talented persons from anywhere in the world. Focusing on the emerging needs of the digital native population, using new low-cost methodologies and limited financial resources, startups are growing from zero to one, creating new value, and then from one to one billion, scaling globally in just a couple of years. In summary – technological innovation is critical to the survival and competitiveness of emerging and existing organizations and technology entrepreneurship is an engine for moving tech-empowered ideas to impact. This course lays the foundation to participate in this new business reality – to undertake a robust analysis, design and exploration of technology-born opportunities. It introduces tools and frameworks that help isolate and control the factors shaping the identification, evaluation, and development of commercial opportunities.

Learning Objectives

• The course is designed to help students develop the ability to find, evaluate, and develop technology-born opportunities into commercially viable product and process concepts, and build those concepts into viable business propositions. The material covered is research and theory-based but the course is practice-oriented with much of the time spent on shaping technology-based opportunities in order to inspire and enable students to start a company. A central objective of this subject is to equip students with an understanding of the main issues involved in the commercialization of tech advances at both strategic and operational levels. Throughout the course, we use real-life problems (identified by students) to allow students to simulate undertaking an entrepreneurial journey. The entrepreneurial journey is structured along the problem identification, ideation, creation and capture of value with an emphasis on technology as a pivotal component of the venture. This, in return, should help to develop skills necessary to understand product/service development process and to connect technology and impact.

Expected Learning Outcomes

• Be able to analyze viable business models, develop an initial business model and validate its feasibility
• Be able to create a minimum viable product (MVP) in a group
• Be able to develop a problem statement and evaluate the results of its solution
• Be able to differentiate and distinguish between various technological activities associated with the development of a new product / process / service, inside or outside the established firm.
• Be able to use customer development methodology
• Have the skills to work effectively in project teams.
• Know and understand entrepreneurship and the basic characteristics of technology enterprises
• Know how to turn technology ideas into workable business concepts and how to test them in the market
• Own approaches to the application of tools and methods of business informatics to the tasks of assessing and developing the possibilities of their application for a technology enterprise.
• Understand and apply innovative theories and concepts to rigorously identify and develop new opportunities for social and commercial impact.

Course Contents

• Intro to the course and the topic (Jan 19)
• Entrepreneurial Ideas and Opportunities (Jan 20)
• How to Talk to Customers (Jan 27)
• Problem Statement Canvas (Feb 3)
• MVP and Hypothesis testing (Feb 17)
• Invention process (Feb 24)
• Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (Mar 3)
• Intellectual Property (IP) Rights (Mar 10)
• Money for startups (Mar 17)
• Lean Startup (Mar 24)
• Business Model + Startups vs. Lifestyle Businesses (Feb 10)

Assessment Elements

• Project
• In-class discussions and engagement
• A written exam
  The exam is taken in a written format based on a selection of open-ended questions with asynchronous proctoring. The exam is not a blocking element. Students are free to choose 3 out of 4 offered questions. Each question has two parts (a and b) and each question is worth 10 points.

Interim Assessment

• 2021/2022 3rd module
  0.6 * Project + 0.1 * In-class discussions and engagement + 0.3 * A written exam

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

• David J. Bland, & Alexander Osterwalder. (2020). Testing Business Ideas : A Field Guide for Rapid Experimentation. Wiley.

Recommended Additional Bibliography

• Blank, S. (2013). Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything. Harvard Business Review, 91(5), 63–72. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=bsu&AN=87039866

Authors

• TEKIC ZELJKO -