Admission requirements
Only accessible for 3rd year students
This course can only be followed as part of the AIB minor (15 or 30 ECTS).
Description
‘Life's too short to build something nobody wants’ Ash Maurya
This course teaches you how to figure out if your business ideas are worth further development.
Using recent insights in entrepreneurship and especially the startup way of working, the course will guide you through the first stages of a startup development process.
Why ‘a startup development process’? The definitions of what a start-up is (there are many) often contain texts like ‘planning to grow fast’, ‘innovative products/services’, ‘disrupt a market’. You need not develop an innovative, disruptive start-up within this course, but we do want to use the start-up way of working as it allows for iteration, experimentation and fast learning and is ideally suited for gathering knowledge and insights about (modern) entrepreneurship.
The course reflects ‘real life’, where founders of a start-up, after a period of research and designing a value proposition, start pitching for potential investors.
This is a very practical course with an emphasis on learning by doing. And the learning by doing is mostly done through group work. If you want to study literature about entrepreneurship and get an exam about the knowledge you gathered, this course is not for you.
The course will be of interest to those who are considering establishing their own enterprise in the future and to those that want to know more about the start-up way of working in general.
Topics covered
1. Introduction to entrepreneurship and start-ups
2. Design Thinking
3. Identifying market opportunities
4. Discovery experiments
5. Problem analysis
6. Ideation
7. Value Proposition design
8. Assumptions and Hypothesis testing
9. Pitching
10. Validation experiments
Course Objectives
After this course you will be able to:
apply theories in entrepreneurship and innovation (focus on start-up development, on value proposition development and hypothesis testing)
appraise and use tools that are used for the process of creating innovative solutions
research markets and define attractive opportunities in these markets
study a target market and identify a need or problem
identify assumptions and carry out hypothesis testing
develop and improve a value proposition
pitch ideas with convincing verbal and non-verbal communication, including supporting presentation materials
make a judgment as whether they would like to become an entrepreneur
reflect on teamwork and team roles
appreciate the effort and dedication needed to make a business succeed.
Timetable
You will find the timetables for all courses and degree programmes of Leiden University in the tool MyTimetable (login). Any teaching activities that you have sucessfully registered for in MyStudyMap will automatically be displayed in MyTimeTable. Any timetables that you add manually, will be saved and automatically displayed the next time you sign in.
MyTimetable allows you to integrate your timetable with your calendar apps such as Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple Calendar and other calendar apps on your smartphone. Any timetable changes will be automatically synced with your calendar. If you wish, you can also receive an email notification of the change. You can turn notifications on in ‘Settings’ (after login).
For more information, watch the video or go the the 'help-page' in MyTimetable. Please note: Joint Degree students Leiden/Delft have to merge their two different timetables into one. This video explains how to do this.
Mode of Instruction
During the course you will be working as a founding team of a start-up enterprise on tasks like:
Researching and defining a market opportunity
Carrying out discovery experiments to test whether the opportunity is really there
Creating a value proposition
Carrying out validation experiments to find out if anyone cares about your value proposition
Creating and delivering pitches.
These tasks are continuous, require parallel processing, require allocating different tasks to different group members. This implies a high level of interaction and collaboration in the group. Groups can use video conferencing tools like Microsoft Teams to discuss assignments and create deliverables.
The groups will be populated at random before the course starts. Groups will consist of 4 to 6 students. This course is all about business and innovation. Groups are free to select any kind of market opportunity, to align with the topics of the minor we do however expect a strong relation between the business idea and science.
The course itself consists of:
Pre-recorded lectures
Group assignments: the results of the group assignments are incorporated by the group in an enterprise model and in pitches (short and focused presentations)
Individual assignments
Interactive sessions where pitching takes place and case studies are discussed
A final ‘live’ event where groups will pitch their enterprise and receive feedback from experts on both the business idea and their pitch.
This course uses pre-recorded lectures to allow us to make optimal use of the interactive sessions. Students will be informed how the interactive sessions will be run before the course starts. The interactive sessions are live sessions where all students need to be present.
Assessment method
Assignments on Brightspace contain explanations and specifications about the work that needs to be done by groups and students and the deliverables that need to be submitted on Brightspace. The assignments also explain how graded assignments will be graded.
Rubrics on Brightspace are used to grade the submissions and are also used to provide students with feedback.
Students are graded on the following aspects:
Students are graded on the following aspects:
Quality of feedback on a pitch from another group provided by the own group (5 %)
Quality of pitches created by own group (15 % in total)
Quality of case study and case study presentation carried out by the group (15 %)
Quality of the hypothesis testing approach created by the group (15 %)
Quality of the Entrepreneurial Opportunity Model created by the group (25 %)
Submitted Lessons Learned by each individual student (10 %)
Individual reflection paper, containing reflections on the potential success of the business idea (15 %).
Grading specifications:
Partial grades will be rounded off at two decimals and will be communicated through Brightspace
The final grade will be calculated using the non-rounded off partial grades and taking into account the weights of these partial grades
Your final calculated grade can be adjusted manually by the lecturer in the case of special circumstances.
Resits:
Resits are only possible for individual work and when a partial grade is below 4.0. If a group assignment receives an insufficient grade the lecturer can allow the group to resubmit or carry out an alternative assignment to make up for the deficiency.
In very specific circumstances students can get an insufficient final grade even when meeting all the requirements for partial grades. In these circumstances the lecturer can allow the student to carry out an alternative assignment to make up for the deficiency.
Reading list
Christensen, Clayton (1997) The Innovator’s dilemma. HBR Press
Ries, Eric (2011) The Lean Startup. Crown Books
Osterwalder, Alex (2010), Business Model Generation. John Wiley Publishers
Osterwalder, Alex (2014), Value Proposition Design. John Wiley Publishers
Fitzpatrick, Rob (2014), The Mom Test (a preview will be provided in the course)
Keeley, Larry (2013) Ten Types of Innovation. John Wiley Publishers
This is just part of the literature that will be used during the course. This list contains the ‘real’ books. The other parts of the reading/viewing list consist of videos to watch and articles to read on the Internet. Links to these articles and videos will be provided in the related assignments.
Reading the real books is optional for the course, so this list is just to show you some of the ‘classics’.
Registration
For application EduXchange is used, application will start on Wednesday 15th of May 2024 at 13:00h.
Application period:
TU Delft, Erasmus and LDE students: 15 May 2024 (at 13.00h) - 31 May 2024
Leiden University students: 15 May 2024 (at 13.00h) - 4 July 2024
More information about the application procedure can be found on this website:
Contact
Remarks
Students are responsible for enrolling/unenrolling themselves for (partial) exams/retakes.
Students are responsible for enrolling themselves for (partial) exams/retakes.
The deadline for enrolling for an exam/retake is 14 calendar days before the exam/retake takes place (exam date - 14 = deadline enrolling date).
Students who do not enroll themselves for an exam/retake by the deadline are not allowed to take the exam/retake.
Students fail the course if any of the partial components (except the exam) that make up the final mark of the course is assessed below 4.0.
Students fail the course if the grade for the (final) exam is assessed below 5.0.
The final grade is expressed as a whole or half number between 1.0 and 10.0, including both limits. The result is not to be expressed as a number between 5.0 and 6.0.
If one of the components of the final mark constitutes a component that assesses attendance or class participation, students cannot take a retake for this component. Therefore, students fail the course if their mark for this component is less than 4.0.
Partial grades, inclusive the exam grade will not be rounded. If partial grades will be communicated, it is possible partial grades are rounded, but unrounded partial grades will be used in the calculation of the final grade. The final grade will be rounded at 0.5 (5.49 will rounded down to a 5 and a 5.5 will be rounded up to a 6.0).
Students pass the course if the final mark is 6.0 or higher (5.49 will rounded down to a 5 and a 5.5 will be rounded up to a 6.0).
For courses, for which class participation is an assessment component, students may not be penalised for an absence if the student has a legitimate justification for this absence. The student must notify the program coordinator via email minoraib@liacs.leidenuniv.nl of such an absence BEFORE the lecture, describing the reason for missing the lecture. If the student does not notify the program coordinator before the lecture, the student will be penalised. Students may be required to provide further documentation to substantiate their case, and class attendance requirements are only waived under exceptional circumstances such as illness.
Students who are entitled to more exam/retake time must report to minoraib@liacs.leidenuniv.nl at the start of the minor.