Data-Driven Business Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Course manual 2022/2023

Course content

Entrepreneurship is fundamental to generate value added from innovation and it is an increasingly important subject for students and professionals, also in the context of data science. The growing complexity of the data science sector and its accelerating dynamics urge professionals to think and act in an entrepreneurial way. Due to the informatization of society, data about nearly everything emerge every day. By using data, searching for inferences and patterns, may entrepreneurs help to better support their new ventures.

This course is especially useful for ambitious students who want to demonstrate their ability to analyze data in order to pursue a career as an entrepreneur or who want to work at an entrepreneurial firm. During the last hundred years entrepreneurial innovation is the main generator of jobs and welfare in Modern Society, the “true source” of national competitive advantage. Many Universities, Research Institutes and Research Departments of large Enterprises have adopted policies to stimulate the relationship between entrepreneurship and innovation, in the hope of facilitating economic growth.

During the course students will learn basic knowledge about how to successfully launch a new venture and its underlying business idea. Working in teams, students will be requested to collect and analyze data in order to identify and validate an innovative and scalable business idea - representing a starting point for a potential start-up - to present in a “business pitch” and a “short final report” at the end of the course. Students must support their proposal by data analysis.

The course is based on three main pillars:  1) lectures; 2) tutorials; 3) coaching.

• Lectures: aimed to transfer academic knowledge in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship; based on a recommended book, selected academic papers and speeches of industry experts in different entrepreneurial fields.
• Tutorials: aimed to the development of personal entrepreneurial soft skills, which may contribute to entrepreneurial success. Tutorials are based on interactive lessons, discussion of selected empirical cases and execution of specific assignments representing the steps that entrepreneurs follow in order to create a new business idea.
• Coaching (in tutorials): it is the time in which students have the opportunity to discuss their business idea with the instructors. During the coaching students will receive advices and instructions regarding the development of their business idea, their presentation and preparation of the final report (for example, how to identify a “minimum viable product”, implement a strategic analysis of industry competitors, writing a solid business plan).

Study materials

Literature

• Lectures and tutorials are mainly based on:

  1) The recommended book: "Entrepreneurship successfully launching new ventures - global edition - 6th edition” (R. Barringer and R.D. Ireland, 2019).

  https://www.pearson.com.au/9781292255330

  Note: a previous book edition (like the 5th) is also fine, but be sure it is a global edition.

  2) Academic papers that will be indicated in the following section “Lectures”.

Syllabus

• Please notice that:

  • The course will start with the lecture on 7th February 2023 (Tuesday).
  • After the first lecture, students need to form their teams (by a maximum of 5 students).
  • Further instructions and study material will be given during the course.

   

  1st Lecture: Introduction Course – 7th February (time: 17-19)

  Topics:

  • Recognizing opportunities and generating ideas.
  • The technique entrepreneurs use to generate ideas.
  • Lean start-up and the concept of “minimum viable product”.

  Literature (mandatory):

  • Chapter 1 of the book: “Introduction to entrepreneurship”.
  • Chapter 2 from the book - “Recognizing opportunities and generating ideas”.
  • Trabucchi, D., & Buganza, T. (2019). Data-driven innovation: switching the perspective on Big Data. European Journal of Innovation Management.

  Literature (optional):

  • Blank, Steve, "The Four Steps to the Epiphany", chapter 2: The Path to Epiphany: The Customer Development Model, 2005 (https://web.stanford.edu/class/archive/engr/engr140a/engr140a/cgi-bin/MFP/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Session-4-Customer-Development.pdf)
  • Blank, Steve, “Why the Lean Start-up changes everything, Harvard Business Review, may 2013, (https://hbr.org/2013/05/why-the-lean-start-up-changes-everything)
  • Ries, Eric, The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, Crown Publishing, 2013
  • Kollmann, T., Kleine-Stegemann, L., de Cruppe, K., & Then-Bergh, C. (2021). Eras of Digital Entrepreneurship. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 1-17.

   

  1st Tutorial: Teams present their initial ideas - 13th February (time: 13-15)

  Each Team needs to present their team and initial idea in a PowerPoint presentation, convincing that it can become a “new business opportunity”.

  Goal per team: Each team has max 8 minutes (including questions).

   

  2nd Lecture: Conducting a feasibility analysis – 14th February (time: 17-19)

  Topics: 

  • Explaining the definition and importance of a feasibility/industry analysis.
  • Discussing critical issues in conducting a feasibility/industry analysis.
  • Describing a feasibility analysis template.

  Literature (mandatory): 

  • Chapter 3 of the book: “Feasibility analysis”.
  • Chapter 5 of the book: “Industry and competitor analysis”.

  Literature (optional):

  • Harari, G. M., Lane, N. D., Wang, R., Crosier, B. S., Campbell, A. T., & Gosling, S. D. (2016). Using smartphones to collect behavioral data in psychological science: opportunities, practical considerations, and challenges. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(6), 838-854. 

   

  2nd Tutorial: Feasibility analysis presentation – 20th February (time: 13-15)

  Each team has to present in a PowerPoint presentation a feasibility analysis with the following key elements (see Chapter 3, Appendix 3.1 and 3.2 of the book):

  1) Strength of the business idea;

  2) Industry-related issues;

  3) Target market;

  4) Founders-related issues;

  5) Financial issues;

  6) Overall potential;

  7) A list of the internet resources/data they believe useful to develop their business idea.

  • Important: the assessment (score) of the first six elements must be supported by (online or standard) interviews/surveys that a team needs to realize with a small sample (e.g. 10-15 persons) that represents their potential target market or potential investors.

  Goal per team: 8 minutes per team (including time for questions).

   

  3rd Lecture: Designing an effective business model – 21st February (time: 17-19)

  Topics: 

  • Describing a business model and its importance.
  • Distinguishing different types of business models.
  • Explaining the components of a business model.
  • Comparing the Barringer-Ireland template and the Canvas template.

  Literature (mandatory): 

  • Chapter 4 of the book: “Developing an effective business model”.
  • Hartmann, P. M., Zaki, M., Feldmann, N., & Neely, A. (2016). Capturing value from big data–a taxonomy of data-driven business models used by start-up firms. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 36(10), 1382-1406.
  • Sorescu, A. (2017). Data‐driven business model innovation. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 34(5), 691-696.

  Literature (optional):

  • Massa, L., Tucci, C. L., & Afuah, A. (2017). A critical assessment of business model research. Academy of Management Annals, 11(1), 73-104.
  • Fruhwirth, M., Ropposch, C., & Pammer-Schindler, V. (2020). Supporting Data-Driven Business Model Innovations: A structured literature review on tools and methods. Journal of Business Models, 8(1), 7-25.

   

  3rd Tutorial: Business Model workshop – 27th February (time: 13-15)

  Teams need to present in a PowerPoint presentation a “Canvas business model template” with respect to the final idea they aim to develop. The team needs to present each element of the business model.

  Goal per team: 8 minutes per team (including time for questions).

   

  4th Lecture: “Designing the business process of your idea” – 28th February (time: 17-19)

  Topics:

  • Designing flow diagrams in BPMN (business process model and notation) to support business process management, by providing a notation that is intuitive for both technical users and business users.
  • White, S. A. (2004). Introduction to BPMN. Ibm Cooperation, 2(0), 0. Available at:http://yoann.nogues.free.fr/IMG/pdf/07-04_WP_Intro_to_BPMN_-_White-2.pdf
  • Students can read BPMN 2.0 Symbol Reference at this link: https://camunda.com/bpmn/reference/ (Links to an external site.)

  Literature (optional):

  • Rozman, T., Polancic, G., & Horvat, R. V. (2008). Analysis of most common process modeling mistakes in BPMN process models. In 2008 BPM and Workflow Handbook. Slovenia: University of Maribor.
  • Zur Muehlen, M., & Ho, D. T. (2008, January). Service process innovation: a case study of BPMN in practice. In Proceedings of the 41st Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2008) (pp. 372-372). IEEE.

   

  4th Tutorial:  Presenting the business process – 6th March (time: 13-15)

  Teams need to make a brief presentation showing how the basic functionalities of their business idea can be designed using flow diagrams and the BPMN notation.

  To download: Students can download the following free software to design flow diagrams: “Draw.io”, https://about.draw.io/integrations/#integrations_offline (Links to an external site.).

  Goal: 10 minutes per team (including questions)

   

  5th Lecture: The main sources of financing – 7th March (time: 17-19)

  Topics: 

  • The main sources of financing that are available to entrepreneurs.
  • Debt and equity and financing.
  • The phenomenon of bootstrapping
  • Focus on crowdfunding (which data influence investment decisions).

  Literature (mandatory): 

  • Chapter 10 from the book - “Getting Financing or Funding”. 
  • Bi, S., Liu, Z., & Usman, K. (2017). The influence of online information on investing decisions of reward-based crowdfunding. Journal of Business Research, 71, 10-18.

  Literature (optional):

  • Mollick, E. "The dynamics of crowdfunding: An exploratory study." Journal of Business Venturing, 29, no. 1 (2014): 1-16.

   

  5th Tutorial: “Crowdfunding workshop” – 13th March (time: 13-15)

  Teams need to present a “potential” crowdfunding campaign for the new company they intend to develop, using “Kickstarter” https://www.kickstarter.com/ or another platform.

  In their campaign teams only needs to present basic elements (not start the campaign for real): a short video or a website mockup, the funding goal, the duration of the campaign, the rewards structure.

  Goal: 8 minutes per team (including questions).

   

  6th Lecture: The business plan and the new venture’s financial strength – 14th March (time: 17-19)

  Topics: 

  • Explain the purpose of a business plan.
  • Explain how to effectively present a business plan and basic financial indicators (ratio analysis and forecasts).

  Literature (mandatory): 

  • Chapter 6 from the book - “Writing a Business Plan”.
  • Chapter 8 from the book - “Assessing a new venture financial strength and viability”.

  6th Optional Tutorial: Final coaching – 20th March (time: 13-15)

  If needed, before their final presentation, teams have the chance to have a final meeting with their instructor. 10 minutes per team (the meeting time and order will be arranged with the instructor during the last lecture).

   

  Final business idea presentation: 21th March (time: 17-19):

  The teams will present their final business ideas during a pitch presentation using PowerPoint, indicating potential revenues, costs and target investors.

  Industry and faculty experts will be invited to provide feedback.

  Time: max 8 minutes per team (including questions)

   

  Final Exam: 30th March (time: 13:00-15:00)

  There will be a final exam (multiple choice questions) focusing on the mandatory lectures topics.

  Further instructions will be given during the course.

   

  Deadline to send the final report on 4th April (see the manual on Canvas for instructions)

Practical training material

Other

• Students will work in team (the list of student teams can be founded on Canvas/Datanose) and will receive a grade (from 0 to 10), which is a weighted average of:

  • The “individual” final exam (on lectures' topics). It represents the 60% of the final total grade.
  • The “team” participation and the accomplishment of assignments during the tutorial lessons. It represents the 20% of the final total grade. Only one tutorial class can be missed. Active participation during class is very important, strongly encouraged and will positively affect your grade. A scarce participation will negatively affect your grade.
  • The “team” final pitch presentation of their business idea and the evaluation of a final report presenting the idea. It represents the 20% of the final total grade.

Objectives

• Identify and delineate the fundamental steps in the creation of a new venture, from the idea generation to its financing
• Better master and use the academic literature on entrepreneurship. In particular, critically making use of theoretical foundations for practice-based ideas
•  Acquire the ability to search for and recognize an innovative business idea (i.e., think ‘out of the box’)
•  Use data analysis in order to translate a business idea into a set of criteria for a “minimum viable product”
•  Develop the ability to cooperate and constructively communicate a new business idea by the creation of a business pitch presentation and the writing of a business plan
•   Approach with confidence the entrepreneurial challenges in the creation of a new venture

Teaching methods

• Lecture
• Seminar
• Presentation/symposium
• Self-study
• Supervision/feedback meeting

Learning activities

Attendance

In TER part B of this programme no requirements regarding attendance are mentioned.

Additional requirements for this course:

Only 1 tutorial class can be missed. Active participation is very important, strongly encouraged and will positively affect your business idea or grade. Scarce participation could negatively affect your business idea or grade.

Assessment

Multiple Choice Exam of 28 Questions (UVA cut-off score of 19 correct answers) based on the course material (slides, books, and articles discussed in the lectures). 

Final report (according to instructions presented in the full manual that students receive in class). 

Fraud and plagiarism

The 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' applies to this course. This will be monitored carefully. Upon suspicion of fraud or plagiarism the Examinations Board of the programme will be informed. For the 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' see: www.student.uva.nl

Course structure

Contact information

Coordinator

• dr. Angelo Tomaselli

Staff

• dr. Angelo Tomaselli