After completing this course students will know how to:

• ...search, recognize and assess business opportunities
• ...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.

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 target and to arrive at a decision
• summarising the most important outcomes in a pitch-book 

Team Work:  

• work efficiently in teams through reconising 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 environements and for different target groups (eg. experts, team members)
  

In order to successfully pass this course, your absence is limited to 20% of our appointments. Furthermore, the full-time presence at the kick-off day(s), the mid-term pitch and the final pitch is obligatory! Finally, attendance of the Entrepreneurship Avenue Kick-Off day, the lab-dates and the final conference is part of the course and thus mandatory.

The final grade of the course will depend on

• Pitch-deck (small + large) (50%)
• Participation in class and coaching (20%)
• Deliverable 1 + 2 (Individual and team objectives)  (10%)
• Deliverable 4 + 5 (Reflection D1 & D2)  (10%)
• Entrepreneurship Avenue + Touchdown participation (10%)

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

The following grading scale applies:

Students are also requested to rate their peers per email by May 31. Whereas the peer review is not part of the official deliverables and grading scheme, it can influence the final grade if the student is in between two grades. In the peer rating, you each divide 100 points among the team members (including yourself). Please let the share of point reflect the contribution and work of your team peers during the semester. This peer rating is confidential, no one except us will see it. Example: 100 points: Student A (30 points), Student B (30 points), Student C (20 points), Student D (20 points).

Students are provided with a compendium of articles, handbooks and reading materials during the semester. The compendium will be made available online via learn@wu.ac.at.

Peter Keinz: peter.keinz@wu.ac.at

Shtefi Mladenovska: shtefi.mladenovska@wu.ac.at

Last-minute changes to appointments should be expected, due to the fact that students will work on a real-life project. Reliability, flexibility, and tolerance for ambiguity are of utmost importance!