LOJA10284U Entrepreneurship and Innovation

A growing need for innovative solutions and start-ups has shifted entrepreneurship and innovation management from a mere business school agenda to career options and demanded competencies across academic disciplines. Students are challenged to engage in venture teams and use their knowledge for bringing innovative solutions to society. This course is specifically designed for non-business students who want to find out more about idea development and start-up processes in new ventures, and also about how existing organizations can become more entrepreneurial and manage the non-technical aspects of innovation processes. It introduces students with little or no background in business studies to theories and tools for entrepreneurship and innovation management that can assist them in idea development and realization. To combine the process with their “own world” students will build venture teams and develop a venture idea that addresses a challenge connected to their fields of study. The challenge themes are: Food, health, clean-tech & natural resources, developing countries & the bottom of the pyramid, and communications & media. Ideas are not limited to new products or new for-profit ventures, but may include any type of innovation in a new or existing for- or non-profit setting. The specific challenges will be defined each year based on collaboration with relevant enterprises and stakeholders, including student incubators and entrepreneurship support organizations. Students who would like to use the course to work on their own business idea have the opportunity to turn their idea into a challenge a student team could work on. The conditions are that the student contacts the course organizers well before course start (before 15 June for block 1 and before 1 March for block 4) to assess feasibility and turn the idea into a venture challenge case.

At the beginning of the course a group formation process will be initiated. This will be followed by a kick-off session in which the specific challenges will be presented by representatives from the challenge hosts. The course itself will then include theory input and insights from practitioners, but will have a strong focus on project work and feedback sessions. Theory sessions presented in online and guest lectures will include an introduction to A) innovation theories and innovation management tools that can be applied in new ventures or existing organizations (creativity techniques, innovation process models, design thinking, business modelling), B) classic and new entrepreneurship theories (opportunity discovery and creation), and C) a “two toolboxes” approach of “effectual” tools (e.g. means-driven action, affordable loss, stakeholder commitments, leveraging contingencies) and “causal” tools (e.g. business plans) for developing a new venture. In project work sessions students will need to work in their “venture teams” and apply these theories and tools to develop venture ideas through group work, in-class exercises, and interaction with real stakeholder. The project work will be supplemented by regular feedback sessions consisting of presentations, guest lectures, and supervision hours.