Technology entrepreneurship

Throughout this course, you will learn to apply flexible and adaptive approaches towards decision making in new business development along with more familiar planning and prediction-based approaches. Using adaptive and flexible approaches (like design thinking, rapid prototyping, effectuation), entrepreneurs take small organic steps during their decision making process and apply validated learning approaches such as the lean startup method as a way to deal with uncertainty – which is typically very high in the commercialization of new technology Accordingly, the intellectual content of the course 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 use various methods for flexible and adaptive decision-making as well as planning based approaches to support an entrepreneur or innovator with a key decision in the process of bringing novel technology to the market. 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.

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

This course uses a blended learning format, where the theory and content is delivered by means of web lectures, podcasts and articles. The time is 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 decision.

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:

At the end of this course, you will have learned:

• To distinguish flexible and adaptive decision-making logics as used by expert entrepreneurs from the prediction and planning-based approaches (i.e. traditionally accepted business management practices) in bringing new technology to the market
• To argue the application of flexible versus planning-based approaches under different situations.
• To use flexible and adaptive (i.e., action-based) versus planning-based approaches to new business development and business model design
• To reflect on your experience with the different approaches to new business development in a high-tech setting and how this aligns with your personal preferences and interests

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