Applied Bachelor - High-tech Entrepreneurship

Year 1

The first year can be seen as a basic starter pack for tomorrow’s entrepreneurs. Students enter the programme with an idea they want to make reality. We start with the skills of presenting an idea well – because a lot of genius goes unnoticed in the world simply because an idea is communicated inadequately. Students will work on the basis of Lean/Pitch Canvas frameworks for idea validation, identity and communication strategy and they learn how to make their idea pass the business model test. Students learn how to identify opportunities and obstacles in business entrepreneurship. Furthermore, students are immersed in all the business basics of running a startup: lean business models, business validation, business plan preparation, USP/SVP identification, etc.

Topics

• From Zero to Hero
• Digital Product Development
• Design Thinking
• Needs Finding and Concept Creation
• Lean Startup
• The Startup Garage: Testing and Launch
• Startup Company Legal Environment
• Startup Ecosystems
• Writing a Business Plan
• Identity and Communications
• Sales Basics
• The Startup Stack
• Startups for Extreme Affordability
• Technical Project Management
• Negotiations
• Big Data & Emerging Technologies
• Capstone Project - 1
• Seminars & Workshops - 1

Year 2

The second year delves deeply dive into building a lean startup organisation while learning essential strategic and analytical skills. The objective of this academic year is to find the elusive product/market fit and build an MVP. Students are expected to talk to potential customers, learn essential sales techniques, become able to find and test various customer acquisition channels, develop effective messaging and positioning. Teams will be expected to execute their sales and marketing plans, define and build and MVP and test it with early customers. This is often the hardest part of the journey for startups and the programmes rigour will expand the abilities of any student and push them to reach their full potential. By the end of the year, students will have an MVP that’s not only validated using frameworks but also tested with early customers. Throughout the process the teams are assisted by mentors and take advantage of opportunities to pitch their ideas to investors and startup competitions.

Topics

• New Venture Marketing
• Digital Assets
• The Power of Storytelling in Business
• Customer Acquisition for Startups
• Business Models / Business Model Innovation
• Hiring & Leading Teams
• Data Driven Marketing & Sales
• Social Media Marketing
• Mobile Marketing
• Growth Hacking
• Digital Strategy
• Building and Managing Email Campaigns
• Essentials of Strategic Communication
• Viral Marketing
• E - Research & Surveys
• CRM & Loyalty Programmes
• E- Commerce
• Selling & Presenting
• Angel and Venture Capital
• Early Stage Company Valuation & Financial Modelling
• Taxes and Business Strategy
• Social Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation
• High-Performance Leadership
• Programmatic & RTB
• Capstone Project

Year 3

In the third year, student startups will transform into real companies. Student startups are expected to have found their product/market fit so they will start scaling, and doubling down on strategies that worked at early stage to turn them into real growth. The third year is essentially about transforming a lean startup into a scalable venture backed business. Students will learn how to automate and scale into a properly running organisation, how to build high-performing sales teams, how to lead and hire for a fast growing organisation and how to create and nurture company culture as the company grows. In this final year students will be pushed to their limit as they turn their startups into businesses while planning, designing and executing on much more complex strategies as they prepare to raise venture funding, and subsequently become the next unicorn. The year will culminate in a Demo Day where student startups will compete in for investors, mentors and the student body.

Topics

• Master Classes with Leading Practitioners
• Designing Creative Organisations
• Managing High Growth Enterprises
• Building and Managing Professional Sales Organizations
• Interpersonal Dynamics and Conflict Resolution
• Global Value Chain Strategies
• Strategic Management of Technology and Innovation
• Leading Strategic Change
• Motivation in Startups
• Entrepreneurship from the Perspectives of Women
• New Business Models in the Emerging Markets
• Web Scraping for fun and Profit
• China's Internet Market
• Data Visualisation
• Capstone