Project Science and Tech-based Entrepreneurship

Doel vak

Develop entrepreneurial competencies:
● Dealing with uncertain situation by
o Taking initiative
o Be courageous
o Act responsible
● Takes quick and informed decisions
● Be creative and innovative
● Be oriented towards result and output
● Develop Entrepreneurial leadership
● Be cooperative
● Be constructive
● Develop autonomous/independent attitudie
● Feedback: giving and receiving
● Develop Communication skills:
o Pitching
o Writing report

Inhoud vak

This course is an introduction to “Science-based Entrepreneurship”. We
all know successful examples of science-based entrepreneurs. Elon Musk,
Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are amongst the most well-known examples,
but one could think as well of entrepreneurs such as Loes Bijleveld who
enables farmers in Cote d’Ivoire to buy organic waste in order to turn
it into biogas as an energy source, or Jiajun Cen who founded the Dutch
startup Aquabattery. Companies also need entrepreneurial minds, those
people are called ‘intrapreneurs’ - entrepreneurial changemakers within
a company.
To be a successful science and tech entrepreneur, one needs sound
disciplinary knowledge of a practical scientific domain, combined with
knowledge of and hands-on experience with innovation processes and
entrepreneurship. In science-based entrepreneurship both natural and
social scientific principles are combined in a process of
entrepreneurial engagement to support valorization of ideas.
In this course we enable you, as a student, to initiate and/or
contribute on a fundamental, practical level to such processes. You take
the freedom and responsibility to make the project both a challenge of
translating theory into practice and an experience in personal
entrepreneurial development. You build on your disciplinary academic
background to independently design and test a science-based
entrepreneurial idea. You come up with this idea yourself, or, you
approach a science-based (start-up) company with whom you collaborate to
develop the idea (for example a start-up in the Demonstrator lab at the
VU).
In executing the project you (of course) get support from the teachers,
entrepreneurial role models and fellow students. You choose a topic. You
work on developing the topic into an idea. You design strategies on how
you are going to test the idea. Through this process you gain insight
into how a particular technological innovation or the application of
innovative knowledge from a specific fundamental research domain in your
disciplinary field of research creates commercial and societal value.
The project helps you to further develop entrepreneurial competencies to
develop an entrepreneurial idea and to put it into practice. This means
that in the project, you need to pay attention to both the science and
business and innovation aspects of the topic. You will first develop a
practical knowledge base by studying business and innovation literature.
You will then use the knowledge to develop an analytical perspective on
your entrepreneurial idea. Part of this perspective is to research the
value of the idea which will require you to develop and sharpen your
skills as an academic entrepreneur. Finally, you will develop a
valorisation map with recommendations (1 ) to upscale an innovative
technology or (2) to develop potentially promising, innovative
entrepreneurial applications based on fundamental scientific knowledge.
We expect that based on the final report you can confidently make
decision about whether to start a company or implement the project

In order to do so, you familiarize yourself, with the help of the
teachers, with several aspects of natural scientific knowledge from your
specific background, as well as with the management literature about
upscaling technological innovation . Additionally, the project offers a
practical methodical approach based on case study research in order to
develop academically solid, research-based consultancy report. Based on
a list of competencies associated with entrepreneurship, you select 4-5
competencies that you want to (further) develop during this project.
Using a particular method for deep learning based on reflection, the
development of these skills during the project will be systematically
assessed in the final stage of the project period.

Aanvullende informatie onderwijsvormen

Lectures, pitching, group work.

Toetsvorm

Individual and group assignments

Literatuur

Blankesteijn, M., et al. (2020). " Science-based entrepreneurship
education as a means for university-industry technology transfer."
International Journal for Entrepreneurship and Management. International
Journal of Management Education 18(3): 100425.
Perusso, A., et al. (2020). "The contribution of reflective learning to
experiential learning in business education." Assessment & Evaluation in
Higher Education 45(7): 1001-1015.
Thomassen, M. L., Middleton, K. W., Ramsgaard, M. B., Neergaard, H., &
Warren, L. (2019). Conceptualizing context in entrepreneurship
education: a literature review. International Journal of Entrepreneurial
Behavior & Research.
Kuratko, D. F., & Morris, M. H. (2018). Corporate entrepreneurship: A
critical challenge for educators and researchers. Entrepreneurship
Education and Pedagogy, 1(1), 42-60.
Krueger, N. F. (2009). The microfoundations of entrepreneurial learning
and… education: the experiential essence of entrepreneurial cognition.
Handbook of university-wide entrepreneurship education, 35-59.