Technology entrepreneurship

Throughout this course, you will learn about the key concepts related to technology commercialization by means of a series of web lectures and a guest lecture. The following topics will be discussed in the course:

• Identifying market opportunities for novel technologies
• Business models and business model innovation
• The entrepreneur and the winning team
• Technology commercialization strategies: the market for technology versus the market for products
• Risk & uncertainty
• Revenue models
• Growth and exit

Next to this theoretical component, you will learn to apply and use these concepts and frameworks to support an entrepreneur or innovator with a key decision in the process of bringing novel technology to the market by means of a team project. These key decisions cover topics like the selection of a market or customer segment, how to position the technology in the market, how to expand internationally, how to select and build a partner (network), how to grow the team, etc. This team project is centered on the notion of “Validated Learning”, defined as an iterative learning process of trying out an initial idea, measuring it to validate the effect and incorporating the lessons learned into the succeeding test (Ries, 2012). You will be supported in your team project by means of various feedback sessions and workshops.

This course uses a blended learning format, where theory and content are delivered by means of web lectures, podcasts and articles. The time in the classroom is used to contribute to panels and participate in workshops and coaching sessions that assist the students in supporting entrepreneurs with their key strategic decisions.

The central question to be addressed throughout this course is how to bring new technology from the lab to the market. The process of bringing new technology to the market is surrounded with a lot of uncertainty. Dealing with uncertainty and taking decisions despite this uncertainty is therefore a crucial skill. The objective of this course is to create awareness, understanding and application of flexible and adaptive decision-making approaches along with more familiar prediction and planning-based methods for decision making in the face of uncertainty in new business development based on new technology. Moreover, you will learn to use various methods, frameworks and tools (such as the lean startup method, design thinking & rapid prototyping) that help innovators in dealing with this technological and market uncertainty and bring their technological inventions to the market. Together, this translates into the following learning objectives:

After this course, students are able to:

• Describe the core concepts related to technology entrepreneurship (e.g. opportunity generation, business models, entrepreneurial teams, commercialization strategies),
• Identify the key challenges that characterize the process of technology commercialization,
• Evaluate business opportunities by applying relevant analytical frameworks and decision-making approaches,
• Apply various strategies to deal the the uncertainty and risk inherent to the process of business model development and design

You must meet one of the following collections of requirements

• Collection 1
• Completed Final examination Bsc program
• Collection 2
• Completed Pre-Master

• Video lectures and scientific articles