Insegnamento a.a. 2021-2022

• Identification of the entrepreneurial opportunity (from the idea to the business concept).
• Market, customers and competitors analysis.
• Business model design principles.
• Customer creation.
• Identification and test of key assumptions underlying the business model.
• Strategic positioning and go-to-market strategy.
• Financial projections (customer acquisition cost; customer lifetime value).

• Understand the start-up and business planning process, and its practical utility. 
• Identify and explain how a particular innovation can create value for a target customer.
• Identify the trade-offs that entrepreneurs face in designing a business model, as well as in the choice of positioning strategically their business in the market.  
• Explain the relationship between the different business model activities, and how they relate to value creation and value capture for the business venture.

• Perform a business opportunity analysis based on the potential market value.
• Identify and profile a clear target market for the business – i.e., early adopters; and the customer journey.  
• Choose and apply the appropriate tools to design experiments for testing the business model’s assumptions.
• Interpret the evidence from the tests to validate the key assumptions or reformulate them while designing the business model.
• Work in team, interact in a constructive way, and think critically.

• Face-to-face lectures
• Guest speaker's talks (in class or in distance)
• Case studies /Incidents (traditional, online)
• Group assignments
• Interactive class activities (role playing, business game, simulation, online forum, instant polls)

The learning experience of this course includes, in addition to face-to-face lectures, working in team and interacting (outside the classroom) with prospective customers.

• As a team, students conduct surveys, experiments, talk to prospective customers/partners/competitors, deliver (for scheduled sessions) presentations about the individual parts of the business model, and discuss the tests and results the team has come up with for validating the underlying assumptions of the business model.
• Guest speakers and stylized cases are proposed to students to offer and discuss the issues of the entrepreneurial process in applied, real cases.
• Moreover, students are offered the opportunity to work on real startup projects and interact with their entrepreneurs.

With the purpose of measuring the acquisition of the above-mentioned learning outcomes, the students’ assessment is based on two main components: 

1. Teamwork outcome (60% of the final grade), which includes group assignments and presentations, final elevator pitch presentation and final business plan document, aimed to test the students’ ability to work in team, and deliver a project’s result. 
2. Peer evaluation (40% of the final grade): (1) Assess the student individual contribution to the team’s output. (2)The final startup pitch of each group will be evaluated the rest of the class. 

Students’ assessment is based on a written exam. The exam consists of open questions on the key aspects of the start-up and business planning process. 

The main course material, for both attending and non-attending students, is: 

• S. BLANK, B. DORF, The Startup Owner’s Manual. K&S Ranch Publishing, 2012. 
• A. OSTERWALDER, Y. PIGNEUR, Business Model Generation. Wiley & Sons, 2010.
• The slides of the course, and the additional readings that are uploaded to the Bboard platform of the course.