Admission requirements
3rd year bachelor students
Description
‘Life's too short to build something nobody wants’ Ash Maurya
This course teaches you how to turn ideas, visions, broad and sweeping goals into a company. Using recent insights in entrepreneurial and innovation driven organisations, the course will guide you in developing an enterprise ‘the start-up way’.
Why ‘developing an enterprise’? We are in favour of learning by doing, so we want to make this course very practical: with a group you will generate a business model for an enterprise that you might actually want to establish in real life. Creating a real company is not mandatory within this course, but it has been known to happen.
Why ‘the start-up way’? 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. This is a very practical course with an emphasis on learning by doing. And the learning by doing is mostly done through group work.
The course will be of interest to those who are considering establishing their own enterprise and to those that want to know more about the start-up approach in general.
Topics covered
1. Introduction to entrepreneurship and start-ups
2. Identifying market opportunities
3. Value Proposition design
4. Business models and revenue models
5. Pitching
6. Validation
7. Financials
8. Funding
9. Demand generation
10. Selling.
Course objectives
After this course you will be able to:
apply contemporary theories in entrepreneurship and innovation
appraise and use tools that are used for the process of innovation
define market opportunities
study a target market and identify a need or problem
develop and improve a value proposition
create a business model
develop a go-to-market strategy and describe the challenges in going to market
pitch your ideas with confidence
make a judgment as whether you would like to become an entrepreneur
reflect on teamwork and team roles
appreciate the effort and dedication needed to make a business succeed.
Timetable
Check MyTimetable and use your ULCN account to login.
You will find the timetables for all the courses and degree programme in MyTimetable. This enables you to create a personal timetable. Any teaching activities that you have registered for in uSis will automatically be displayed in your timetable. Any timetables that you add will be saved and automatically displayed the next time you sign in.
Detailed table of contents can be found in Brightspace.
Mode of instruction
During the course you will be working as a founders’ team of a start-up enterprise on tasks like:
Researching and defining a market opportunity
Creating a value proposition
Creating a business model
Creating pitches
Validating your assumptions about all the above topics.
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 cover all bases 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 focussed presentations)
Individual assignments
Interactive sessions. The interactive sessions are used to discuss pitches and provide feedback on pitches. Each group will submit one or more pitches during the course according to a schedule that will be published at the start of the course
A final ‘live’ event where groups will pitch their enterprise and receive feedback on both the pitch and their enterprise model.
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 sessions might be live, online, or a mixture of these approaches dependant on how the situation related to Covid-19 evolves. If it is technically feasible, there will be the option to partake online for those that feel live meetings are not yet appropriate.
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.
Rubrics on Brightspace define how each submission will be graded and are also used to provide students with feedback.
Students are graded on the following aspects:
Quality of feedback provided by each individual student to other groups (10 %)
Quality of pitches created by own group (20 % in total)
Quality of case study and case study presentation carried out by the individual student (15 %)
Quality of the created enterprise model with the own group (25 %)
Submitted Lessons Learned by each individual student (10 %)
Individual reflection paper (20 %), containing reflections on how to deal with the received feedback during the final event and discussing the potential success of the start-up, providing arguments for this from theory and from the course.
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.
There will be no final exam, it is however still necessary to register in USIS for the final exam/assignment in order to receive a grade.
Resits are only possible for individual work.
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
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 syllabus.
Reading the real books is optional for the course, so this list is just to show you some of the ‘classics’.
Brightspace
Brightspace and MS Teams
Brightspace will be used extensively in the course for:
Distributing course materials
Defining assignments and rubrics
Communicating course staff feedback and grades (feedback can be found within the rubrics)
Submitting required deliverables (e.g. presentations, recordings of case study-meetings, lessons learned, papers) by students.
We will use MS Teams for:
Communication within and between groups
Running the interactive sessions
Asking questions of course staff
Submitting documents (also) meant for other groups/students (like case studies).
Registration
Students have to register for the course in uSis. Click here for instructions.
This course can only be followed as part of the SBI minor (15 or 30 ECTS).
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).
It is not possible to do retakes for group assignments. Therefore, if students fail the group assignment component, they fail the course.
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 (info@sbb.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 info@sbb.leidenuniv.nl 10 days before the exam/retake takes place.