Note: This course is not only for students that want to start their own business; it is broader than that and aims to make students understand and appreciate the intricacies of starting a business or becoming part of a business.

At the end of the course, teams hand in an substantiated business development plan showing the student’s mastery to apply relevant concepts and models from strategy, marketing, finance, and innovation concepts that substantiate the critical strategic decisions underlying the start of a new business, social enterprise or other form of entrepreneurial undertaking. The focus will be to develop entrepreneurial thinking skills and apply these within the 17 global sustainable development goals. Active student participation within the teams (e.g. quality of work, task support, attendance at group meetings, etc.) is therefore necessary and will be assessed.

Prime learning objectives are that:

The focus of this course will be on the challenges that an entrepreneur faces when starting a business. In line with its entrepreneurial focus, the course is set-up as a business development project. Students will operate in a multi-disciplinary team acting as upcoming (social) entrepreneurs. Student teams will develop a substantiated business plan (BDP) for a startup that anticipate on issues bridging the various gaps that an entrepreneur encounters starting a science-based business, i.e. technology to product, product to market, and market to business organization and finances. The focus will be on components of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals as starting points for the development of entrepreneurial ideas.

To increase the chances of success for these science-based businesses and to avoid costly mistakes, the entrepreneur has to anticipate key decisions with respect to the marketing mix (e.g. the 4 p's) and business development (e.g. strategic positioning, sustainable competitive advantage, financial feasibility) with the promises provided by the (new) technology (e.g. innovation management, new product development). Models regularly used to develop a business will be included like the Golden triangle, business canvas model, and additional creative (and lateral) thinking skills.

Many relevant concepts and models have already been discussed in other courses, such as Innovation Management and Policy and Economics, by recommended literature and related scientific articles. Some appropriate concepts and models will be discussed in class by means of workshops and team pitches, in team meeting and consultations.

Guest speaker(s) include, amongst others, representatives of Radboud Innovation (Science) and the recently (May 2018) established Mercator Launch. One of the aims is to align the requirements for entering Mercator Launch as an entrepreneur with the contents of this course.

Instructional Modes