The course engages the students in active learning. Sessions center on professor-led class discussions of the readings, and how they can be used in the two assignments. In the last session, students present their future business idea. Active participation and preparation counts as a percentage of the final grade.
There are two assignments.
The glitched slide deck. Entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas to stakeholders using a slide deck, with some slides on the current situation, and some slides on the business model that turns that situation into an opportunity for value creation. You and one co-student create such a slide deck with a twist: this is a slide deck from 2035, and the deck contains two version of slides on ‘the current situation’ that differ wildly from each other, and yet the business model slides fit with both. Bring your own expertise and interests to the topic. Some examples of potential topics to be investigated are the increasing economic inequality, sustainable development and resource depletion, agritech, AI consulting, surveillance, synthetic biotech, water management.
The 2035 Entrepreneurship Index Report. The big consulting companies and state institutions issue index reports on everything from AI to birth rates, summarizing all the development of the past year. So, surely, you can then individually also create such a report on prevalence and importance of various types and forms of entrepreneurship (across all fields). In fact, to make it more interesting, let’s add the twist that you instead summarize future developments, say until 2035. In the course we will discuss some tools for you, like the scenario method, identifying and investigating so-called driving forces which impact these various possible future types and forms of entrepreneurship.