Prospectus

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Creating a Start-up 2

Course
2016-2017

Admission requirements

Admission is conditional on submission for the minor Innovation, Co-Creation and Global Impact
A knowledge of Dutch is not necessary. You should have obtained your propedeuse before starting this minor.

Description

The second stage of you start-up initiative concerns a pilot experiment and can be considered as an action learning experience. It tests your initial Minimum Viable Product (MVP) on a larger scale, before developing a full-blown global strategy. It allows your team to spend dedicated and purposeful time to test your preliminary concept before rolling it out fully. You will learn to set-up the pilot experiment with a carefully chosen aim and research question, develop a method to gather and analyse data, prepare the materials that help you to collect your data, execute your experiment, analyse the data and derive conclusions from that with regard to your business and/or concept. This stage can be challenging because of the ‘dependencies’ on people, organisations and resources. This provides extra learning on how to take and share responsibilities with(in) your team. Throughout this course you will develop the ability plan, and measure and evaluate impact of your start-up. The success of your start-up will depend on scaling: does it sustainably and effectively add value to employees, customers and locations?

Course objectives

After this course you will be able to:

… evaluate the impact of a pilot experiment
… assess a business strategy
… identify opportunities for a business
… develop a strategy to scale a business
… assess your own qualities and pitfalls
… reflect on taking part in an interdisciplinary team
… report on your personal learning objectives for becoming more effective
… present the framing, value proposition, experiment and strategy of your start-up

Timetable

Nov 10/ 10h-14h: Defining your pilot
Nov 17/ 10h-14h: Prototyping
Nov 24/ 10h-14h: Pilot planning & practising
Nov 28 – 4 Dec: 10h-14h: Pilot execution (A)
Dec 5 – 11 Dec: 10h-14h: Pilot execution (B)
Dec 15/ 10h-14h: Analysing & evaluating your pilot study outcomes
Dec 22/ 10h-14h: Scaling your pilot

Mode of instruction

Interactive lectures and workshops

Course Load

This is a rough breakdown of the course load

  • 28 hours are spent on attending lectures and workshops;

  • 21 hours are spent on preparing for the lectures;

  • 12 hours to write an individual essay;

  • 8 hours preparing for the group presentation;

  • 12 hours to write a group report.

Assessment method

Assessment and grading method:

  • Group report 40% of final grade

  • Individual essay assignment 40% of final grade

  • Final group presentation 40% of the final grade

  • Obligatory attendance of the lectures and workshops (Pass or Fail)

  • Rounding off grades to 0,5 decimales is subject to class participation.

Blackboard

Yes

Reading list

Pentland, A. (2012). The New Science of Building Great Teams. Harvard Business Review (available online).
Brown, T. & Wyatt, J. (2010) Design Thinking for Social Innovation. Development Outreach 12(1) 29 – 43.
Hardy, B. (2015). Why Keeping A Daily Journal Could Change Your Life. Observer (available online).
Di Stefano, G. Gino, F. Pisano, G. and Staats, B. (2014). Learning By Thinking: How Reflection Improves Performance. Harvard Business Review (available online).

Articles assigned for specific lectures are to be announced. The order of the literature varies and is subject to change, please check Blackboard for the latest update.

Registration

You have to register for both the minor and the course in Usis. Registration for this course only is not possible.

Registration Studeren à la carte and Contractonderwijs

N/A

Contact

Sjoerd Louwaars

Remarks

This course is part of the minor in Innovation, Co-Creation and Global Impact. You can only take the course as part of this minor.