Technology Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship Course code Course title Type of course Stage of study Number of credits Lecturer Prerequisites Form of studies Teaching language GRAI011 Entrepreneurship Compulsory Graduate 6 ECTS 32 hours of class work (14 hours theory and 18 hours practical assignments), 128 hours of self-study, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Modestas Gelbūda Undergraduate diploma Full-time English/Lithuanian Course description This course introduces the fundamentals of technology entrepreneurship, pioneered in Silicon Valley and now influencing other locations around the world. Students will learn major frameworks and logics, as well as master the process used by technology entrepreneurs to start companies. Such process involves taking a technology idea and finding a highpotential commercial opportunity, acquiring resources such as talent and capital, discovering how to sell and market the idea, and managing rapid growth. The class reveals the entrepreneurial mindset: when others see insurmountable problems, people look for opportunities in technology and business solutions. A technology entrepreneurial perspective is also a useful way of thinking in order to tackle new opportunities in social entrepreneurship, be it in a public sector government or NGOs (non-profits). The pedagogical approach includes lectures, guest lecture presentations, case analyses, variety of practical assignments, which will require students to work in groups and individually. Course aim Aim of the course is to provide students with knowledge and skills of Entrepreneurship, i.e. offer insights in the complex and dynamic nature of new technology ventures, provide with cutting edge concepts and tools, as well as give them real life experience of starting and developing a new technology venture. Course learning outcomes (CLO) Study methods Assessment methods CLO1. To acquire knowledge of learn the key frameworks in Entrepreneurship and acquire skills to develop an understanding in using them. (session 2 in JB syllabus) CLO2. To we learn major differences between a new business idea and an opportunity in technology fields such as IT and Life Sciences (session 5-6 in JB syllabus) CLO3. To familiarise and master the key concepts and frameworks of entrepreneurial marketing, which include design of a compelling product/service strategy, a well-crafted positioning and competitive differentiation and a subsequent penetration strategy (session 7 in JB syllabus) CLO4. To learn the key concepts of business model innovation and acquire skills of developing innovative business models for technology ventures (session 8 in JB syllabus) CLO5. To learn the key concepts and principles of how Entrepreneurs gather financial resources and deal with the venture finance. (session 9 in JB syllabus) CLO6. To learn the critical factors and principles for solving human resource issues for new ventures such as assembling a team, developing a compensation policy, and creating an innovative culture. (session 13 in JB syllabus) Lecture, group assignment, case analysis seminar, self-study Group assignment, case analysis seminar, discussion session 2 nd SEMESTER 2014 1

Quality management The quality of the course is assured by the variety of teaching and learning methods (combination of lectures, discussions, in-class activities, case analysis, and student presentations), interim knowledge assessment, continuous discussions of individual and group work, case analysis report results, and other assignment results. Course content Nr Topic Economic Growth and the Entrepreneur. Case analysis Contact hours Theory Practice Readings 1 Introduction in to a course. The meaning of entrepreneurship. The role of entrepreneurship in economic development. Mechanism of support to technology entrepreneurship. Group formation, case study, presentations and discussions (Chapters 1-4 2 3 4 5 6 7 Business Idea and Opportunity I This session examines the concept of business idea, the concept of business opportunity, the identification and evaluation of opportunities. Business Idea and Opportunity II This session examines political, social, technological, and economic trends, which lead to the identification of emerging needs. Two approaches to opportunity evaluations will be discussed and applied. Global Marketing and Sales This session examines strategy and entrepreneurship including the concepts of disruptive innovations, marketing, customer development, lean startups, and developing a business model. It will discuss marketing as a set of relationships (i.e., partnerships and alliances) with customers, technology allies, distribution and promotion partners and even competitors along with the popular lean startup philosophy. Workshop Innovative business models for technology ventures This session will focus on the importance of an innovative business model, or how the venture will make money, what factors affect business model coherence and consistency. It will discuss how an entrepreneur can acquire key assets, and how to use them with investors, partners and competitors. Venture Finance and Resources This session will focus on how entrepreneurs set priorities when gathering financial resources. It will also cover various types of financial resources available to new venture teams and their advantages as well as disadvantages seen from a long term perspective. Startup Teams and creating high performance cultures This session will highlight importance of teams in entrepreneurship process. It will examine the most critical human resource issues in new venture development such as (a) assembling a team, (b) developing a compensation policy, and (c) creating an innovative Chapters 7, 8, 19 Chapters 7, 8, 19 Chapters 11,4 (Ch 10, 15; also review Section 3.4 and 16.1 on business and revenue models. Ch:12-14, 18, 20 : Chapters 12 2 nd SEMESTER 2014 2

Nr Topic culture. Contact hours Theory Practice Readings 8 Final presentation of opportunity analysis project (OAP). Presentation and discussion in front of new venture experts. 4 Tutorial 2 Final exam 2 : Chapters 11 Self study and assessment Type of assignment Topics Hours Evaluation, % Interim examination (based on the assigned material (chapters from a course textbook), and a mini case study) 1-4 30 Opportunity assessment project (OAP) (report (Presentation and written report) each student in the course will be a member of a group, and will be preparing a written 1-8 56 30 OAP report and presentation). Written exam (will consist of several open-ended questions. Exam will focus on applying skills and knowledge learned in 1-12 72 50 this course). Total: 160 100 INTERIM EXAM WITH A MINI CASE STUDY The interim examination will consist of two parts: Theoretical part, which covered by class material and assigned literature, chapters from the course text book. This part aims at evaluating to what extent students have internalized and understood key concepts and ideas from the first 4 sessions. Students will be asked to present and discuss key issues from the covered literature. Mini case study will also assess a degree to which students are able to put their knowledge to practice, i.e. apply them in trying to analyse and solve real life problems, by accounting for all contingencies of the case company or entrepreneurial team context. This assignment is individual and will account for 20% of the final grade OPPORTUNITY ANALYSIS PROJECT (Group project) Via the Opportunity Analysis Project (OAP), students will learn how to tell the difference between a good idea in a dorm or a lab and a great scalable business opportunity. Student teams will identify and define a market opportunity and pitch the opportunity to your classmates, the teaching team and new venture professionals. Key Deliverables Each team should pick an opportunity and perform a first analysis to understand whether your opportunity can be turned into a scalable business. In your presentation and written analysis a team will tell the "story" of a proposed venture by addressing as much of the following as possible and appropriate: Concept and Vision. Where did your idea come from? What the market opportunity is and what your solution might be? What makes your solution particularly compelling? How does it make meaning and the world a better place? Do you have personal experiences with this market? Is there existing intellectual property that you must license or new intellectual property you must develop in order to pursue this opportunity? Has anyone tried something like this before? If so, why did they fail or succeed, and why is the opportunity still attractive? Market Analysis. What industry or sector of the economy are you addressing? Why is this market attractive? What segment of the overall market are you pursuing? What market research data can be gathered to describe this market need? What are the total industry or category sales over the past three years? What is the 2 nd SEMESTER 2014 3

anticipated growth for this industry? If this is a new market, what is the best analogous market data that illustrates the opportunity? Project the potential market size and growth for your opportunity. Customers and Customer Development. This is extremely important. You need to have a clear idea of who your target customer is. The only way for you to be able to do this is to "get out of the building" and speak with your potential customers. You will need to answer questions such as: What does the customer need? Why does the customer need it? What is the customer using today? What is the customer willing to pay for your solution? Why? How will you reach this customer? You should include both primary (or first-hand) research and secondary research, emphasizing primary over secondary. Competition and Positioning. Who else serves this customer need? Who might attempt to serve this market in the future? What advantages and weaknesses do these competitors and would-be competitors have? What share of the market do specific competitors serve? Are the major competitors' sales growing, declining, or steady? What are the barriers to entry for you? What are the barriers to entry for additional competitors? How could partners and allies best help you overcome competition from established enterprises or other startups? Business Model and Lean Startup Philosophy. Now that you have discovered an opportunity and talked to potential customers, how will you turn it into a business? How will you make money and when do you expect your venture to be profitable? What is the major risk to address right away (e.g., market or technical)? In other words, which hypothesis regarding product or market strategies need to be tested right away? Learning and Adaptation. What did you learn and how between the time you choose the idea and wrote the first draft of the positioning statement and producing the final written report? Is this idea a true opportunity or not? The list above has no implied order. Some entrepreneurs start with a well-defined concept and then try to identify a market for their idea; others start by studying a market and then stumble upon an idea. Also, please keep in mind that the specific data and information you provide will vary according to the type of opportunity you choose to analyse. Recommended five basic steps in the process of analysing an opportunity: Identify potential opportunities. Combine your own personal experiences and creativity with external forecasts and trend analysis. How is the world changing with respect to new technologies? What is the impact of globalization on current solutions? What new requirements will those changes produce? Recent media articles on trends are often a good place to start. Additionally, you may want to look through Stanford's Office of and Licensing for new technologies that have been developed at the University. Define your purpose and objectives. Identify your most promising opportunity, being careful to discriminate between an interesting technological idea and a viable market opportunity. Prepare an outline which will help you to determine what types of data and information you need to demonstrate the attractiveness of your chosen opportunity. Gather data from primary sources. It is crucial for you to obtain data from primary sources. Potential investors will place more trust in well conducted primary research than in stacks of data from secondary sources. There is simply no substitute for talking to potential customers from the target market in order to validate the opportunity you have identified. Consequently, we prefer that you spend time gathering data from primary, not just secondary, sources. Check out SurveyMonkey as well. Gather data from secondary sources. Countless secondary sources exist on the web and in Stanford's various library resources. The Jackson Library GSB Database Resources and the GSB librarians are especially helpful. Appendix C of the Dorf and Byers textbook offers a good summary of secondary research sources. Try not to get too bogged down in financial and accounting data. Analyse and interpret the results. Persuasively summarize your results. A key success factor for a successful project is the depth of your analysis and what you learned from it. If after careful research you have determined that your business idea is not as promising as you originally thought, it is totally acceptable to present an OAP that describes why your idea will not make sense now rather than why it is the next big thing. An honest, rigorous analysis of an idea that did not survive further scrutiny is preferable to either (a) a half-baked presentation of an idea your team is unsure of, or (b) an enthusiastic job of over selling for your current idea, even though you know it is problematic. Assignment due dates will be provided in advance. Students are responsible for keeping track of these dates. Students cannot redo their case solution reports or re-defend them after the deadline. The accumulative weight of case analysis report and presentation is 30%. 2 nd SEMESTER 2014 4

END-SEMESTER INDIVIDUAL WRITTEN FINAL EXAM End-semester individual written final exam is compulsory and is given to students to check upon the scope (theoretical and practical) of the whole course. The exam will also include material covered during the Interim exam. The Final Exam will consist of several open-ended questions, which require demonstrating both acquired knowledge and deep understanding behind it. The Final examination will also have will mini cases, which students will have solve drawing on the course content. The accumulative weight of the Final Exam is 50%. Course textbook 1. Byers, Thomas, Richard Dorf, and Andrew Nelson,, McGraw-Hill, Third Edition, 2011 Recommended readings 2. Blank, S. & Dorf, B. The Startup owner s manual: The step-by-step guide for building a great company. K&S Ranch Inc, 2012. 3. Timmons, Jeffry A. and Stephen Spinelli, New Venture Creation, Ninth edition, McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2009. 4. Blank, Steve The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win. Specific programme learning outcomes S1. Will be able to analyse a company or an organization as an integral unit, which strives for certain goals in a market or social environment by effectively distributing their finite resources among objects and business activities and obtains synergies from coordinated function planning, organization and management. S2. Will acquire the knowledge and understanding of the main innovation management theories and approaches and will be able to identify opportunities and possibilities for competitive advantage through innovation. S3. Be able to identify new possibilities in national and international markets, to foresee, to analyze and to assess target markets, their potential, to adapt the old products and services and to develop the new ones for these markets, to communicate effectively one s proposals to the market. S.4. Will have developed the insights and skills, necessary to analyse and structure business financial information, to make financial forecasts and apply valuation models, supporting value-adding business decisions. S.5. Demonstrate the fundamental knowledge of strategic and marketing management concepts and techniques and be able make objective strategic & marketing decisions and present well supported recommendations for future action. S.6. Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of organizational and strategic project management process, with special emphasis on its life cycle, and be able to use the tools in managing and delivering innovation projects. S7. Acquire the knowledge of how cognitive, behavioural, and emotional outcomes contribute to and sustain organizations, identifying processes and methods that can improve the behaviour, attitudes, and effectiveness of organizational members, with a particular emphasis on innovation and change management. S8. Demonstrate knowledge and skills for effective technology transfer activities, have competences to make complex decisions for innovation development and solve technology commercialization issues, using knowledge transfer models and technology transfer networks for business companies or research institutions. S9. Demonstrate the knowledge of concepts and tools of starting and developing a new technology venture. S10. Have developed the creative mind-set and innovation capabilities of an entrepreneurial leader (design thinking). CLO CLO1, CLO4, CLO2, CLO4 CLO2, CLO3 CLO5 CLO3, CLO4 CLO6 CLO6 CLO4 CLO1 General programme learning outcomes G1. Be able to apply modern information technologies in the data gathering, analysis and communication. CLO2, CLO3 G2. Demonstrate a systematic, critical and constructive thinking in problem identification and solving. 2 nd SEMESTER 2014 5

G3. Be able to communicate well and express thoughts orally and in writing with specialists and nonspecialist audiences. G4. Demonstrate the competences of an independent learner. G5. To communicate and to work effectively in an intercultural and interdisciplinary group or team. G.6. Demonstrate leadership skills. CLO2, CLO3, CLO4, CLO5, CLO6 2 nd SEMESTER 2014 6