20457 - DEVELOPING YOUR COMPANY
Department of Management and Technology
Course taught in English
Go to class group/s: 22
Course Director:
LUIGI PROSERPIO
LUIGI PROSERPIO
Suggested background knowledge
Being passionate about entrepreneurship and self managed projects.
Mission & Content Summary
MISSION
From the first Internet wave, we have seen enthusiastic young entrepreneurs joining the web arena.
However, a number of diverse factors caused few to succeed and many to fail.
It is not just a matter of ideas, technological capabilities, or viral diffusion; sustainable business models are required to foster the growth of startups and the burst of a new Internet bubble. We try to nurture conscious entrepreneurship, to take advantage of the endless possibilities of the web and the technology in general and to avoid traps and common mistakes.
We have built our course around a business plan required from attending students. This business plan should include your novel ideas along with a professionally crafted financial forecast. Then, we present our ideas to the real world business community, composed of angels and institutional investors.
Please note that your business idea must be formally approved by the course instructors before going into the business plan details.
Please, avoid sterile apps, multi-sided markets (if you don’t have a superior value proposition), ideas with a very strong incumbent.
CONTENT SUMMARY
- Idea generation.
- Management of your team.
- The fundamental rules for a successful Entrepreneurial idea.
- Customer discovery for startups: market, prototypes and tests.
- Competition and benchmarking.
- Specific P&L rules for startups: top line and basic assumptions.
- Operations, technology plan, milestones.
- Forecasting cost in a startup.
- Valuation of your startup.
- Social pacts.
Intended Learning Outcomes (ILO)
KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING
At the end of the course student will be able to...
- Identify the most useful and practical managerial theories to be used in a real entrepreneurial setting.
- List/estimate the assumptions and the financials of a startup.
APPLYING KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING
At the end of the course student will be able to...
- Understand the practical aspects of entrepreneurship.
- Design/develop an innovative idea.
- Develop a state-of-the-art business plan.
- Assess the feasibility of an entrepreneurial idea.
- Assess Business plans if a student will work for a Venture fund or in Incubators.
Teaching methods
- Guest speaker's talks (in class or in distance)
- Group assignments
- Interactive class activities (role playing, business game, simulation, online forum, instant polls)
DETAILS
In this very interactive course, we rely on:
- Continuous teamwork: you have to develop your own entrepreneurial idea in groups, as it happens in a real startup.
- Students' presentations: you have to pitch your deliverables, you have to get feedback from colleagues and professors in order to improve your startup.
- Guest speakers: young entrepreneurs, past students of this course that made a startup, investors, renowed entrepreneurs, to give you a real taste of the entrepreneurial experience.
That's why attendance for this course is strongly recommended (of course with a convenient threshold of lessons that could be skipped).
Assessment methods
| Continuous assessment | Partial exams | General exam | |
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ATTENDING STUDENTS
- 80% Business Plan.
- 20% Elevator Pitch.
- PASS/FAIL, Individual exam. In case of FAIL, 4 points are subtracted from the final grade.
- Peer evaluation (to confirm your grade or to diminish it in case of negative feedback from your peers, from 0 to minus 4).
The making of a business plan is intended to test the ability of students to apply their knowledge and understanding of managerial theories by designing an innovative idea and developing it in all the relevant aspects. Moreover, the making of a business plan is intended to test the abilities requested to real entrepreneurs.
The same assessment principles hold for the Elevator Pitch.
NOT ATTENDING STUDENTS
One-shot written exam (essay &/or multiple choice questions).
Teaching materials
ATTENDING STUDENTS
Books, for the making of your business plan (NO formal exam on these books):
- R. ABRAMS,Successful Business Plan (Secrets & Strategies), PlanningShop, 2014, 6th edition (MANDATORY, also available in E-Pub).
- D. BUTLER, Business Planning for New Ventures: A guide for start-ups and new innovations, 2014 (STRONGLY SUGGESTED, also available in E-Pub).
PAPERS AND SLIDES, for the individual exam (MANDATORY):
- Slides uploaded on Bboard.
- Up to a maximum of 4 papers, to be announced throughout the course.
NOT ATTENDING STUDENTS
Book:
- R. STUTELY, The Definitive Business Plan, Prentice hall, 2012.
Papers (Please find the papers on the Bocconi’s library (the database name is Business Source Complete, on on JSTOR, or directly on the Internet):
- S.A. ZAHRA, W.C. BOGNER, Technology strategy and software new ventures’ performance: exploring the moderating effect of the competitive environment, Journal of Business Venturing, 1999.
- J. EUCHNER, A. SLYWOTZKY, Business design (interview with Adrian Slywotzky), Research-Technology-Management, 2015.
- E.D. BEWAIO, Pre-start-up preparations: Why the business plan isn’t always written, The Entrepreneurial Executive, 2010.
- S. SINHA, The Exploration–Exploitation Dilemma: A Review in the Context of Managing Growth of New Ventures, VIKALPA (is name of the journal), 2015.
- N. ROIG-TIERNO, J. ALCAZAR, S. RIBEIRO-NAVARRETE, Use of infrastructures to support innovative entrepreneurship and business growth, Journal of Business Research, 2015.
- C. ZOTT, R. AMIT, Business Model Design: An Activity System Perspective, Long Range Planning, 2010.
- D.J. TEECE, Business Models, Business Strategy and Innovation, Long Range Planning, 2010.
- A. RAUCH, W. HULSINK, Putting entrepreneurship education where the intention to act lies: An investigation into the impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurial behavior, Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2015.
Last change 10/05/2019 11:16