GRA 3136 New Venture Creation
GRA 3136 New Venture Creation
In this course, students will gain real-life experience creating a new venture. The course will equip students with state-of-the-art entrepreneurial tools and methods to form entrepreneurial teams, develop, validate, and assess business ideas, and understand how to build a viable business model around them. Students will develop their new ventures in collaboration with the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Oslo. The skills acquired will enable students to start their own ventures, commercialize innovations, or establish a new line of business within an established company.
The course is acknowledged as preparation course for "Gründerskolen" (the Norwegian School of Entrepreneurship, summer programme), and will therefore also run in the spring semester.
By completing the course, the students will be able to:
- Evaluate the theory and practice of entrepreneurship, including team formation, lean startup method, business modelling, and the preconditions for scaling.
- Gain knowledge about creating new ventures with various actors in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, such as a business incubator.
By completing the course, the students will be able to:
- Effectively build and manage entrepreneurial teams.
- Use methods and tools to create new ventures.
- Engage with customers and other actors in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
- Present business ideas convincingly to investors and decision-makers.
Through the creation of new ventures in dialogue with the real world regarding the viability of their business ideas and the financial, intellectual, organizational, and policy-related challenges and opportunities they encounter, students will enhance their capacity for critical reflection on entrepreneurship in society.
- Founders, teams, and ideas
- The idea-generation process
- Customer engagement and feedback
- Building products and services
- Engaging with entrepreneurial ecosystems
- Entrepreneurial resourcefulness and raising resources
- Business modeling
- Pitching and storytelling
The course is structured around developing and validating business ideas and business models related to startups. Course tutors will engage in coaching the development work throughout the semester. Step by step, a business model's core elements and assumptions will be developed and – as far as possible – tested. The final delivery (exams) consists of a business model pitched to an expert panel (30%) and handed in as a term paper (70%). The critical aspects of the business model will need to be backed by reference to relevant entrepreneurship research. Students are expected to participate actively in class discussions and engage with the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Please note that while attendance is not compulsory in all courses, it is the student's own responsibility to obtain any information provided in class.
All courses in the Masters programme will assume that students have fulfilled the admission requirements for the programme. In addition, courses in second, third and/or fourth semester can have specific prerequisites and will assume that students have followed normal study progression. For double degree and exchange students, please note that equivalent courses are accepted.
Disclaimer
Deviations in teaching and exams may occur if external conditions or unforeseen events call for this.
| Assessments |
|---|
Exam category: Activity, Oral Form of assessment: Presentation Exam/hand-in semester: First Semester Weight: 30 Grouping: Group/Individual (1 - 4) Duration: 1 Semester(s) Comment: Oral group presentation ("pitch") of the project Exam code: GRA 31367 Grading scale: ECTS Resit: Examination when next scheduled course |
Exam category: Submission Form of assessment: Submission PDF Exam/hand-in semester: First Semester Weight: 70 Grouping: Group/Individual (1 - 4) Duration: 1 Semester(s) Comment: The term paper has to be written in a group of maximum 4 students (in special circumstances individually). Requirements will be shaped by the nature of the Start-Up and its demand, with guidance from the lecturer. Please note, a degree of primary market research and outreach is expected. Exam code: GRA 31368 Grading scale: ECTS Resit: Examination when next scheduled course |
All exams must be passed to get a grade in this course.
| Activity | Duration | Comment |
|---|---|---|
Teaching | 36 Hour(s) | Combination of lectures, group exercises and project supervision. |
Group work / Assignments | 80 Hour(s) | Developing and testing business idea and business model, writing a business plan. To be handed in for the exam. |
Student's own work with learning resources | 34 Hour(s) | |
Company visit and/or Study trip | 10 Hour(s) | Meet with actors in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. |
A course of 1 ECTS credit corresponds to a workload of 26-30 hours. Therefore a course of 6 ECTS credits corresponds to a workload of at least 160 hours.