Business Project – Starting Up

The Green Innovation Lab Edition in the Summer Term 2026

Transforming cutting-edge climate and sustainability research and technology into real-world impact is both, one of the central opportunities but also one of the biggest challenges of our time. The Green Innovation Lab is a unique inter-university initiative that brings together WU Vienna, Austrian Institute for Technology, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, University of Applied Arts, Vienna University, and Institute of Science and Technology Austria to accelerate the commercialization of sustainability-oriented deep-tech innovations.

As a SIMC student, you'll participate in the Green Innovation Lab in the course of the Business Project – Starting Up. This class is WU’s flagship pre-incubation program for early-stage, research-based ventures. In this special edition, the program focuses explicitly on turning climate and sustainability technologies into pilots, partnerships, and scalable ventures that generate measurable economic, environmental, and societal value.

Course Concept

Students work in small, interdisciplinary teams and are matched with leading scientists who have developed new or significantly improved technologies and are exploring pathways toward commercialization and making real-life impact. Each team acts as an entrepreneurial venture team, systematically assessing the market potential of the assigned technology and developing a robust commercialization concept.

Objectives

The course pursues three central objectives:

• Building interdisciplinary venture teams with the potential for long-term collaboration 
• Supporting scientists in identifying and evaluating market opportunities, enabling well-founded “go / no-go” commercialization decisions
• Developing a professional business proposal (pitch deck) that can serve as a foundation for grant applications, investor discussions, or spin-off formation

Learning Approach and Content

The course follows a strongly practice-oriented, hands-on approach. Participants receive training and coaching in key entrepreneurial domains, including:

• Application and customer discovery
• Customer validation and problem–solution fit
• Market and competitor analysis
• Business model design
• Go-to-market strategy development
• Financial planning 
• Professional pitching 

In parallel, teams work on early communication prototypes and concept demonstrations to clearly articulate the value proposition of the technology.

Demo Day and Ecosystem Exposure

At the end of the semester, student teams present their projects at a Demo Day to representatives from Austria’s innovation ecosystem.

After completing this course students will know how to:

• ...search, recognize and assess business opportunities for climate and sustainability technology
• ...enrich business ideas by applying appropriate methods and tools
• ...identify customers and their needs
• ...analyze and evaluate the ecosystem around the business idea
• ...develop profitable and sustainable business models
• ...apply creativity techniques throughout the whole process of business development.

Furthermore, students will acquire relevant complementary skills:

Project Management:

• manage several different stakeholders at once
• structure an innovative, fuzzy project and deal with uncertainty 
• manage different ways to arrive at a decision
• summarizing the most important outcomes in a pitch-book 

Team Work:  

• work efficiently in interdisciplinary teams through recognizing and incorporating individual strengths of each team member
• cope with different work styles, opinions and perspectives
• complementing the team by actively searching for external support to outweigh weaknesses within the core team

Communication:

• engage in lively discussions and interactive workshops
• structure complex data (project outcomes)
• present project outcomes in different environments and for different target groups (e.g., experts, team members)

In order to successfully pass this course, your absence is limited to 20% of our appointments. Furthermore, full-time presence at the kick-off day(s) and the final demo day is obligatory! 

The course is built around several coaching sessions and workshops, which are structured to be interactive and combine several teaching methods, eg. teamwork, open discussions, individual team coaching, and coaching by external mentors.

During the kick-off session, the basic principles of entrepreneurship, business model design, opportunity recognition and tools to be employed during the semester will be presented and discussed.  

The students will be supported in the further development of their ideas by lecturers and external mentors. Regular presentations of results are scheduled. The results of the start-up planning process will be summarized in a pitch book.

The final grade of the course will depend on

• Pitch Deck (30%) 
• Documentation (30%)
• Demo Day Pitch (15%)
• Touchdown Pitch (5%)
• Executive Summary (5%)
• Participation in class (15%) 

In order to pass the class, all of these performance indicators have to be positive!

The following grading scale applies:

This course is designed as an immersive, practice-oriented learning experience rather than a purely academic exercise. Participants work on real-life projects with genuine commercialization potential and take on roles similar to those in early-stage deep-tech ventures. As a result, the workload is somewhat higher than in many other WU courses and benefits most from active engagement, initiative, and collaboration within the team.

Students who are primarily looking for a low-effort course may find this format less suitable. For those who are motivated to learn by doing, eager to work closely with researchers, and willing to go the extra mile to gain first-hand experience in building a deep-tech venture, the course offers a particularly rewarding and valuable experience.

To participate in the class "Business Project - Starting Up (Geen iLab Edition)", you need to register via LPIS and in addition, you'll have to submit an "application one pager" to peter.keinz@wu.ac.at in which you answer the following questions:

1.) Why do you want to participate in this class?

2.) What specific and relevant skills do you have that make you the "perfect" participant for this class?

Please submit your "application one pager" until February 13, 2026, 6 pm, at the latest.

Based on the "application one pager", the lecturers will make the final decision whether or not you'll be allowed to participate.

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Peter Keinz: peter.keinz@wu.ac.at