Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice

About

Entrepreneurship plays a vital role in shaping dynamic economies and innovative societies. It promotes creative thinking, independent action, and practical solutions to real-world challenges. By encouraging initiative, adaptability, and responsible risk-taking, entrepreneurship not only leads to new businesses and employment opportunities but also drives progress across industries. It enables individuals to transform ideas into impactful outcomes, making it a key force for sustainable growth and positive societal change.

This module provides a practical, hands-on approach for students interested in developing and testing a new business idea. While ideal for aspiring entrepreneurs preparing to launch their own ventures, it also offers valuable insights for intrapreneurs—those who lead innovation within existing organisations. By examining high-potential ventures and creating a business feasibility plan, students will gain a clear understanding of the factors that influence new venture success, including desirability, feasibility, and viability, as well as strategies for securing human, technical, and financial resources.

Focusing on real-world application, the module aims to build the skills, behaviours, and mindsets essential for opportunity recognition, value creation, and successful venture development. By the end of the course, students will be equipped with the knowledge and tools needed to pursue innovative business ideas both independently and within established organisations.

Week one: Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Customer Discovery
Invention and innovation: identifying and evaluating new opportunities
The new business lifecycle: selecting and testing viable commercial ideas
Social and sustainable entrepreneurship: alignment with the UN 2030 Agenda, the SDGs, and ESG principles
Understanding markets and identifying business opportunities
Customer discovery and validating customer needs
Testing market demand through customer development approaches

Week two: Business and Financial Planning
Business planning and business model design
Operations and management in new ventures
Lean start-ups and developing the minimum viable product (MVP)
Financial planning for new businesses
Identifying and testing key business model uncertainties
Delivery channels and managing customer relationships
Team formation, equity allocation, and remuneration structures
Registering and setting up a company

Week three: Pitching to Investors and Funding Opportunities
Building the investor toolkit: innovation teaser, website, promotional video
Pitching to investors: pitch types, structure, and delivery skills
Prototype development: using digital tools to create workable prototypes
Intellectual property rights, corporate structure, and legal considerations
Measuring progress through common start-up metrics
Funding sources and presenting to venture capital firms
Engaging with international competitions and global opportunities

Course leader

Evanglos Markopoulos

Course aim

This module aims to:

- Enable you to develop and apply skills and techniques to a new business idea.
- Focus explicitly on testing and validating new venture concepts that you generate.
- Teach methods for analysing, specifying, designing and launching new ventures, together with strategies for assessing business opportunities and techniques for effective business planning to secure necessary resources, including finance.
- Introduce frameworks to assess and mitigate key risks to new ventures, including those relating to personnel, markets and technologies.
- Integrate entrepreneurship theories with practical activities to demonstrate, and help you develop, key elements of an entrepreneurial toolkit for the creation and management of high-potential enterprises.
- Develop the soft and communication skills needed to pitch to investors.

Fee info