Module description
This module seeks to provide you with the skills, tools and mind-sets to enable you to discover and develop opportunities upon which entrepreneurial ventures may be built, whether as start-ups or in established firms. This course also seeks to build your real-world business sense, and develop your presentation skills together with your ability to persuasively articulate a point of view about a business problem that needs to be resolved. Discovery and development skills are fundamental for any manager who seeks to ‘do things differently’ in his or her organisation. Indeed, many graduates find themselves, in their first position, dropped into a setting where there are performance problems they are asked to resolve. Resolving these challenges requires discovering customer, user, and/or business needs and developing a suitable way forward to satisfy those needs. Thus, the course should serves career interests of all kinds, not just those you who plan to start new ventures.
Assessment details
Group Project (40%)
Individual Coursework (60%)
Educational aims & objectives
- To introduce you to entrepreneurship, and further your understanding of who an entrepreneur is, and what the entrepreneurial process is
- To provide you with the skills, tools and mind-sets to enable you to discover and develop opportunities upon which entrepreneurial ventures may be built, whether as start-ups or in established firms.
- To provide you with knowledge of strategic frameworks that can be used in the entrepreneurial process
- To enable you to understand how entrepreneurial opportunities may differ across different contexts
- To introduce you to the growing concept of social entrepreneurship and how it can be formulated in different settings
Learning outcomes
By the end of the module you should be able to:
- Understand what makes a good entrepreneurial opportunity and use different frameworks for generating and testing an idea.
- Clearly articulation and inter-personal skills that enable you to make your arguments clearly and convincingly.
- Appreciate that entrepreneurial opportunities need to be formulated and adapted to different contexts including in established corporations
- Analyze a business idea from different perspectives and to ensure how different parts of the business model such as value proposition, marketing, customer relationships, cost, partnerships and revenue fit together.
- Be comfortable with ambiguity and understand how to navigate ambiguous situations
Teaching pattern
Across the semester teaching is expected to comprise of:
You will also be expected to spend time preparing for classes and working on the assessment tasks each week. The combined hours of classes and independent learning should equate to at least 15 hours a week.
Suggested reading list
The required/additional readings for this module are provided on the virtual learning platform for each week. In addition, some general books that you may want to look into are given below:
1. Shane, S. A. (2008). The illusions of entrepreneurship: The costly myths that entrepreneurs, investors, and policy makers live by. Yale University Press.
2. Reis, E. (2011). The lean startup. New York: Crown Business.=
3. Mullins, J. (2013). The New Business Road Test: What entrepreneurs and executives should do before launching a lean start-up. Pearson UK.
Recommended Journals: Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Journal of International Entrepreneurship, Journal of Business Venturing, Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Journal