How do you teach entrepreneurship?
An academic class on New Venture Creation would appear
to be an oxymoron. Unlike many other entrepreneur courses which
use the tried-and-true format of facilitated lectures, real-world case studies,
creation and judging of a start-up’s business plan, the new NVC class integrates
these tools and collaterals into a classroom laboratory environment to promote active
What is active exploratory learning?
learning promotes the philosophy of creating a living, dynamic classroom lab with
the following key characteristics:
Student-led explorations are keys
Each session has a high element
of improvised but themed discussions, generally led by the students
Lectures, reading assignments,
textbooks, reference materials are not the main event – they frame the
discussion themes of each session, but do not limit the conversations to
within the content coverage of the materials
Students proactively bid for time
and space to showcase their learning.
They must adjust their strategies for learning and for their
deliverables based on the dynamic environment of the classes and of other
students in the classroom
Students actively participate in
how they want to be graded in achieving the learning points
Why is this a more effective form of learning?
Today’s youths are inundated
with information – why would adding new case studies and lectures/ PPT/notes
make a strong impression? The youths can
find information at the speed of a click – they
, and they
save information they find
etc. The challenge of education, then, is not to
teach our youths to answer questions. Given
a set of questions, they can easily play back answers they ctrl-C and ctrl-V and
. The challenge and the overriding objective of
this course are to impart a set of skills, attitudes, and knowledge so the
students can ask good questions and to be able to interpret information they
find on new venture creation. We know students can find answers. It’s their ability to ask good questions that
spells the key to success in today’s dynamic knowledge economy. This is the key education objective in New
Venture Creation, Spring 2009.
As a comparison of how this class is taught
as compared to the prior 4 years of this class:
Prior 4 years of NVC Curriculum: 2009 NVC Curriculum :
Lectures on: Orchestrated Conversations on:
1. New Ideas, Business Plan,
Business Model 1.
How do we learn about entrepreneurship?
What is entrepreneurship? What is social
entrepreneurship? Are entrepreneurial
opportunities discovered or are they
Competitive Strategy 2. What is BlueOcean? What is disruptive innovation? What is co-opetition? Under
what venture conditions should one deploy
Financing & Venture Capital 3. How do we get funded? Who do we want on our
How much money do we need? What
makes a good venture investment? How would
recognize a good investment opportunity?
Going Global 4. Where are the market opportunities? How do
Should we stay in a single market
win first or should go global from the
5. Legal Considerations 5. What do we need to know about Intellectual
Property? Why is IP management important?
How does the legal regime affect
strategies to profit from their ventures?
6. Negotiation 6. Why is negotiation important to
How do you achieve win-win? What is trust?
7. Power Selling 7. Attitudes of an entrepreneur
What do we know about people’s behaviors?
How do you manage sales in a hi-tech
Business Plan, Venture Reports 8. Bid for right to showcase what we know.
larger objective of imparting the right skills, knowledge, and attitudes, this
course follows a structure that covers the major elements of startup/entrepreneurial
activity, including evaluation and planning of a new business, financing, team
building, typical marketing and operational management issues, alternative
models for revenue and growth, and exit strategies.
The course is
fast-paced and covers a wide span of business subjects, with a strong focus on
the key challenges in starting a venture and their practical solutions.
Students with no business training are expected to read up on their own
additional background materials, or consult and learn from their classmates,
utilizes orchestrated conversations, numerous field trips, guest speakers,
students-led class discussions and explorations are key markers of knowledge
pursuit. Suggested topics will be
provided for assignments, but students are highly encouraged to be creative and
innovative in demonstrating their skills, know-how, and attitudes during the
You will be scored 40% based on individual input,
and 60% on group projects (deliverables).
Class Assessment - Individual Scores 40%
20% of the total score will be based on the
quality of conversations (knowledge & skills) you contribute to the
class. Obviously, attendance and on-time
arrival would reflect on your attitude.
- 20% will be based on a final exam given on the final day of the
class. The exam will consist of
part-multiple choice questions and part essay.
The exam will draw upon the conversations
of the entire semester and the learning points presented by the various student
teams. Rote memorization of lecture notes will not help you on the exam.
Class Assessment - Team Scores 60%
60% of your
score will come from the team deliverables where all members receive the same
score, with plus or minus bonus based on team feedback on individual member
contribution to deliverables. There will
be 8 teams of 4-5 students each, with the ideal composition of 2 or 3 NUS
students to 2 Fudan students.
must provide 5 deliverables: 2 presentations (15% each) and 3 (10% each) written reports/posters/online
compositions. The subjects covered by
the combination of presentations and reports/compositions are up to each team –
the team can make all 5 deliverables on the same subject matter, or cover 5
different subjects, or any combination thereof.
Each deliverable counts as 10%
of your total score.
Each team has
the complete freedom to decide on the contents of the
list of suggested formats and subjects can be found on IVLE. However, students are not limited to the
suggested list and are free to explore other formats. Deliverables can be in English, Chinese or
bi-lingual. Here is the general
guideline in terms of volume of work for each deliverable:
minutes for oral presentation of PPT (15-20 slides)
minutes of presentation of 10 pages for written report
minutes of oral presentation plus 5 minutes of media clips
minutes for oral presentation of photo collage (10-15 distinct frames)
minutes for oral presentation of 3-5 large size poster boards, etc.
deliverables are shared with all members of class. At the end of the term, each student team
must capture ‘soft copies’ of all 5 deliverables onto 1 CD, with a readme file
to provide the rationale, table of contents, and description of the contents on
uses the 5 deliverables to demonstrate the 4 skills, 4 knowledge areas, and degrees
of entrepreneurial attitudes. You should
devise a strategy on how to make the maximum coverage given the 5 deliverables,
as matched to the class sessions and the composition of the skills, knowledge,
and attitudes of the team members you have.
Think of the class as a competing market – and the 5 deliverables are
your assets. You have these 5 assets to
earn the greatest return (i.e. your grade) versus other competitors (other
dimensions you need to demonstrate are:
Presentation – getting your
points across succinctly, with credibility
influencing others to take your view, win-win style of gaining agreement
Critical Thinking – ability to
ask critical questions, ability to see 360 degree, ability to ask whether
the information/knowledge presented is correct, accurate, believable,
credible, useable, etc.
Demonstrated ability to generate
a good business plan (must cover operational aspects) –
Business & financial model:
how to derive revenue? Who is the
how long before the venture reaches profitability? What is the financial return?
Competitive strategy: who else
is out there? Where is the growth
Marketing & Promotions: how
do I do more with less?
4 Knowledge Areas:
Competitive Strategies –
different ways to craft a path forward, how to deal with competition, how
to deal with unknowns, how to create sustainable competitive advantage
Intellectual Property –
understanding different IP rights, legal considerations for entrepreneurial
startups, why is it important?
– what are some of the venture opportunities? Where are there new growth areas that
Venture Creation – how do I get
funded? Who do I get on the
team? How do I get financed? How do I get the first customer? Do
I need to form alliances to win?
Attitudes (varying degrees of
Humble but confident (“can-do”),
Team-oriented but self-reliant (“I do”),
Hard-work discipline but resourceful/innovation (“how can I do
more with less”)
the deliverable will earn bonus for providing original research/knowledge,
innovative thinking, and strong learning points to the class.
will have lecture PPT uploaded to IVLE.
Each class will start with a lecture and/or
orchestrated thematic conversation – but it’s up to teams to improvise or bid
to present their deliverables on the class slot. As an example of this dynamic flow, one
team may present their version of the business plan for ilemon (class field
trip) in a class to demonstrate the skills in writing a good business
plan. Another team may elect to write
and present a critique to that plan 3 sessions later to demonstrate their
critical thinking skills. As all
students know, the next group of students to present the same method or same
information would receive a lower score in originality. Hence, it’s best that students plan their
work based on the flow of the class lectures and to slot in their deliverables
in the best presentation platform.
There are a
total of 8 teams, each needing to make 2 presentations, totaling 16
presentations of 20 minutes each. In
addition, online compositions/reports also need to be shared in class taking up
10 minutes of class time. There are 24 presentation slots allocated,
but not pre-assigned. Sharing time of
compositions and reports are ad-hoc and based on availability and are to be
requested at the opportune moment of each class session.
presentations give in each session should be somewhat related to the topic
allocated to the session. Hence, if the
team has missed their opportunities to bid to an opening, they are left with
the remainder and must demonstrate their Skills, knowledge, and attitudes
within the context of the remaining sessions.
It is entirely possible for procrastinating teams to not be able to present
their PPTs, in which case, they would be marked as having missed a
class on June 1st is the final exam which is expected to take 1.5 hours. Therefore, any leftover deliverables not yet
shared/presented will be slotted in on June 1st.
Logistics – do not come to classroom for these sessions.
There are 2 field
trips and 1 Start-up Executive Jam session confirmed.
Field Trip 1
: iLemon (www.ilemon.cn)
Field Trip 2
choice of Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Simply Thai/Life, Shokay (www.shokay.com), or self-proposed.
Start-up Executives Jam Session
: meet and
discuss entrepreneurship and hear real life stories from CEOs of 3
companies (exact ones to be confirmed) from this list:
busytrade.com, a b2b
company competing with Alibaba
VYK, a company doing game graphics
Ascentio, a industrial design company
FESourcing, a high-end industrial
equipment OEM manufacturing company
a tent company (JV with German
company) which won bids to supply all tents for Olympics
Just Grapes, a chain of wine stores
a carbon credit arbitrage startup
that replaces energy inefficient light bulbs in schools around China
with energy saving bulbs
biotech company, invested by a
top-tier VC and have several late stage bio-similar drugs in the
an interactive media company that has
a strong coverage in airports, subways, malls, and movie theatres in 8
cities in China
including Shanghai, Beijing.
FINAL VERSIONS OF ALL REPORTS, PPTs, COMPOSITIONS MUST BE UPLOADED TO
IVLE TO BE GRADED! In addition, a single
CD from each team must be submitted.