Delivering a Technology Entrepreneurship module to students with diverse backgrounds (QAA1, 2, 3,6,7,8) #FEEUK

Objective(s) or key message: 

1. Understand challenges and barriers to technology innovation and commercialisation. 
2. Evaluate customer needs and technical requirements using analytic New Product Development tools.
3. Learn to analyse, search, apply and license patents.
4. Create a plan to raise resources for new venture creation such as technology, know-how, talent, equipment, and capital. 
5. Formulate a business model for an innovative technology venture.

Introduction :

This 20 credit level 7 module covers the fundamental principles of technology innovation, and the core knowledge required to run a technology start-up. The module provides a systematic and practical framework for the development of new high-technology ventures, with a particular focus on product development, intellectual property, technology commercialisation and venture capital. The student doesn’t  have to be an engineer or a scientist to understand and analyse technological venture opportunities. The module is based on the principle  that finding a purpose for a particular technology or set of resources and matching it to the right business model is what transforms ideas into economic outputs such as sales and profit.

Activity: 

The module runs over 8 weeks in a trimester. The module is run as 4-hour  (half day) workshops each week. In addition to four units (topics), there are three venture labs that provide an opportunity for formative assessment. The summative assessment (report 100% weight) is due two weeks after week 8. Students are split into groups of 4-5 students for their assessments in the first week. The final report should be a living, breathing manual on the technological opportunity, and will be absolutely vital if students  ever need to further develop the technology, product, or business, or seek funding from an investor.  

The weekly schedule of content and activities is as follows: 

Week 1: Unit 1 - Basics of Technology Innovation and  Entrepreneurship 

Key Sources: OECD (2005), Diaconu (2011), Runge (2014) 

1. Introduce and discuss with examples Technological Product and Process Innovation (TPP) as distinct from organisational Innovation.
2. Introduce technology S-curve and discontinuities using an example. For e.g., the Audio/Music industry. 
3. Ask students to discuss within groups emerging technology trends, what industries they will disrupt and where they see opportunities.
4. Then provide insights on why new technologies are difficult to scale-up, diffuse and adopt.
5. Tell students that technology opportunities don’t have to be new to the world and introduce the idea of bricolage. 
6. Then in preparation for week 2, ask students to think about problems around UN SDGs that can be solved using existing technologies.  

This unit satisfies Objective 1. 

Week 2: Venture Lab 1 - Opportunity Identification and Analysis  

1. Split students into groups where they will work towards their group assessment. 
2. Each team member lists a problem and what potential technological interventions would be needed, and what they already know about the idea. Students need to particularly focus on challenges posed by UN SDGs.
3. Team members then provide thoughts on their peer’s ideas.
4. Team members then agree on one or two ideas to further research on.
5. Then they conduct secondary market research on the opportunities and perform initial analysis (cost, access, and execution) of the various technological interventions.
6. Then they choose the most desirable opportunity, that is economically viable and technically feasible.   

This venture lab satisfies part of objective 2 (Identifying Customer needs) and allows them to choose most suitable technologies (using knowledge and understanding of barriers to technology commercialisation from module 1) that will solve the customer problem.  

Week 3: Unit 2A - New Product Development 1(NPD 1)  - Students learn to use a multi-criterion decision making method “AHP or Analytical Hierarchy Process” (Saaty, 1987) to turn  consumer needs  into numerical weights and then compare competitive products to rank the innovations. Using the example of technology products, work with them to show how AHP works. For example, you could choose Bluetooth ear buds as an example. The workings can be demonstrated by building Microsoft excel worksheets  in the classroom as you progress through the various steps or one could also demonstrate using free online semi-automatic tools such as  easyAHP (http://www.easyahp.com/).  

1. Show students how to step into the shoes of a customer and prioritise between high level selection criterion, for e.g., Sound, Design and Battery in the case of Bluetooth earbuds.
2. Then choose four alternative brands and models from  tech-radar website to compare (Scarott, 2023). Show students how to compare them on each of the above criterion. 
3. Then show how to rank the brand’s/model’s based on how well they trade-off customer needs (bundle of benefits other than price).
4. Finally, it is important to illustrate to students that customers also think in terms of benefits to price ratio, and then rank the alternatives again. 

This unit satisfies Objective 2.

Week 4: Unit 2B - New Product Development 1(NPD 2)  - Students screen for exceptional opportunities and integrate opportunity screening  with QFD (Quality Function Deployment) (Erdil and Arani, 2019) method. QFD is a system for translating consumer requirements into appropriate company requirements at each stage, from research and product development to engineering and manufacturing to marketing/sales and distribution.  

1. Show students how to increase the chance of finding an exceptional opportunity by increasing quantity, quality, and variance in quality of raw opportunities. 
2. Demonstrate how to use QFD to identify and prioritise technical attributes that support customer needs for a product/design using an innovative technology, for e.g., a composite folding bicycle (Detand et al., 2018).  You can demonstrate the workings using free QFD templates such as the online tool from Lucidchart (https://www.lucidchart.com/pages/templates/house-of-quality) or download the excel templates from QFD Online (https://qfdonline.com/templates/). 
3. Ask students to evaluate how some top existing products rank on satisfying customer needs and how they perform on technical attributes.
4. Ask students to do  a basic google search of what technologies exist for the most important  technical attributes that could meet or exceed customer needs more effectively compared to alternatives. 
5. Make students realise that they should now take the initial analysis of Venture Lab 1 in week 2 for their own assessments and create more technological opportunities for the problem at hand. This should help them choose the most exceptional solution (technology combination).  

This unit satisfies Objective 2. 

Week 5: Unit 3 - Intellectual Property (IP) – Patents 

Key Sources: Shear and Kelley (2003), EUIPO (2014), UKIPO (2015) 

1. Show students that Patents offer a negative right. 
2. Illustrate to students the various elements of a Patent document.
3. Show students how to evaluate the novelty and inventiveness of an invention using an example.
4. Demonstrate to students how infringement is assessed using an example.
5. Demonstrate to students how to search and navigate patents on Lens database (https://www.lens.org/) using keywords and classification codes.
6. Conduct a short quiz to assess student understanding of patents.
7. Students work on a patent case study (e.g. Stabilising spoon for Parkinson’s – Patent number US 2014 0052275 A), figure out the current assignee, search for the start-up commercialising the invention, analyse competing technology (e.g. Gyenno spoon https://www.gyenno.com/spoon-en) and evaluate if there is any potential infringement. 

This unit satisfies Objective 3. 

Week 6: Unit 4 - Commercialising Innovations + Venture Capital (VC)  

Key Sources for Commercialisation:  Kline and Rosenberg (2010), Auerswald and Branscomb (2003)

Key Sources for Venture Capital: Cremades (2018), Lord and Mirabile (2018), Alford (2017), Crunchbase (2019) 

1. Explain to students that commercialisation process is non-linear and iterative. 
2. Explain to students using examples the various barriers in commercialisation process (Devil’s River, Valley of death and Darwinian Sea).
3. Explain how Venture capital firms are structured between limited and general partners.
4. Work with students to demonstrate using an example as to how VC compensation works.
5. Work with students to conduct a sensitivity analysis of VC returns and demonstrate how this drives general partners to go for the big wins. 
6. Using average pre-money valuation data from Pitchbook for an example sector (e.g., Agri-tech (Kukutai et al., 2020)), demonstrate how to calculate  pre-money valuation for a company using the Bill-Payne method. 
7. Ask students to reflect and facilitate a discussion on whether they would prefer to seek equity investment for their own opportunities and when is it best to seek equity investments. 

This unit satisfies Objective 1 and Objective 4. 

Week 7: Venture Lab 2 (Customer led product development) : Students must  continue to work in their assessment groups and conduct analysis of customers, competition, and product  (using AHP and QFD) in the lab with tutor support.  

A. Customers. Before the lab, it is expected that students must have researched and conducted preliminary analysis of customers based on the following guidance. They are expected to refine their analysis in the lab with tutor support.  

1.      What does the customer need? Why does the customer need it? 
2.      What is the customer using today? 
3.      What is the customer willing to pay for your solution? Why? 
4.      How will you reach this customer?  

B. Competition and Positioning. Before the lab, it is expected that students must have researched and conducted preliminary analysis of customers based on the following guidance. They are expected to refine their analysis in the lab with tutor support. 

5.     Who else serves this customer need? Who might attempt to serve this market in the future? 
6.     What advantages and weaknesses do these competitors and would-be competitors have? 
7.     What share of the market do specific competitors serve? 
8.     Are the major competitors' sales growing, declining, or steady? 
9.     What are the barriers to entry for you? What are the barriers to entry for additional competitors? 
10.   How could partners and allies best help you overcome competition from established enterprises or other start-ups ?

C. AHP and QFD Analysis. Student teams must evaluate what technical attributes (and technologies) can meet or exceed customer needs more effectively compared to competing alternatives.  

This venture lab satisfies Objectives 2 and 4. 

Week 8: Venture Lab 3 (Commercialisation / Business modelling) : Students must  continue to work in their assessment groups and conduct intellectual property and financial analysis in the lab with tutor support, and then visualise their commercialisation pathway and business model. 

A. Analysis (IP, Financial and Risks) - Before the lab, it is expected that students must have researched and conducted preliminary analysis of customers based on the following guidance. They are expected to refine their analysis in the lab with tutor support. 

1. Is there existing intellectual property that you must license or new intellectual property you must develop in order to pursue this opportunity?
2. What are the costs of Innovation and starting up and how will you raise investment (use Venture capital concepts if appropriate). 
3. How will you make money and when do you expect the venture to be profitable? 
4. What is the major risk to address right away (e.g., market or technical)?

B.  Visualisation tasks

5. Draw a commercialisation roadmap of their opportunity. Student can use online product roadmap tools, for e.g., from Lucidchart (https://www.lucidchart.com/pages/templates/product-roadmap).

6. Draw a visual business model. Students can use online tools such as the Board of Innovation tool on Miro (https://miro.com/miroverse/the-business-model-kit/). 

This venture lab satisfies Objectives 3,4 and 5.

Impact: 

The module bridged the technical challenge for students who did not have a science or engineering background. One student mentioned “I found the module interesting as I come from a non-tech or non-IT background, so this was new and challenging at the same time. I had some basic theoretical knowledge but as a result of completing this module I was able to implement some of the tech theories. The teaching methods adopted were effective and the interactive seminars made it easy for me to understand”.  Another student with a background in sociology commented “Within my MBA at LBU I completed a Technological Entrepreneurship module, where I learnt about various tools including QFD. This tool facilitated my learning within the module as well as a project I was involved in with Leeds City Council, by enabling me to assess how proposed technology – a digital red bag – could meet the requirements of beneficiaries and stakeholders, but also make comparison to other existing technology.” 

Technology  entrepreneurship  has  an interdisciplinary nature requiring the coordination of actors from different disciplines; therefore, it should be accessible to students with non-tech background as well. Due to availability of limited resources during the initial stages of venture creation, an entrepreneur may have to wear several hats of Marketing, Operation (Technical/Non-Technical), Finance etc.. Someone with an engineering or science background can do all the other functions, but it could quickly consumer most of their time. The smartest engineers and scientists team up with visionary business- people who understand how technology can solve human problems.  The best example is that of Apple; although Steve jobs understood technology, the inventive work was done by his co-founder Steve Wozniak.  

Many start-up founders are passionate engineers, designers or business people who want to build amazing things - apps, platforms, robots and more. Many engineers and scientists build great technologies but fail to identify the right problem and end up joining the start-up graveyard. The real talent in entrepreneurship, not only for technology start-ups, is finding the right problem, not building the right solution. In solving the right problem, one can combine existing technologies to come up with product(s) or service(s) concepts  and designs, and create opportunities with ‘commercial’ potential.  One therefore does not have to build a new piece of technology to be a technology entrepreneur. The module encourages non-scientists and non-engineers to pursue technology entrepreneurship by giving them tools and techniques to identify the right problem and opportunity, and team up with the right people. 

Learner outcomes : 

Future Professional Value

“Tools in the tech entrepreneurship module were a lot useful, tools like AHP, QFD not only helped me out in the project but also in my own business to filter out the weightage of attributes and make the decision making easy. “

Strategic Thinking

“The experimenting with different ideas added up to knowledge base of mine about different business, what strategies can work out, what vision do different business carry and overall it opened up the business mind of mine.”

Environmental Sustainability

“The major learning was that there is much that can be done to make useful products out of waste and help towards the keeping the environment healthy.”

Research Skills

“I had a really great time doing this particular module and how we as a team did interviews/questionnaire and other research and came up with a business idea/plan.”

Alignment with Assessment

“One thing that I would like to highlight is the activities you made us do during seminars for example how to use analytical tool such as AHP. It was a great initiative as you never learn something unless you do it on your own. This helped me during my final assessment as well. The other concepts such as stage gate, Patent analyses were of significance to my final project as well.” 

Theory / Practice bridge

“Everything we did in the module became clearer when we got the full understanding, when we had those lab sessions with you. You were able to let us know that you can start off something and it doesn’t mean it is going to work, it might work, it might not work, you can change the journey, the route, and what can make the project or the vision realisable. From there we were able to understand what we were doing. You were very good at breaking down the processes, so it was a very nice moment.“  

Resources:  

New Product Development tools

• QFD tool: Online template from Lucid chart  https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/qfd-house-of-quality or excel templates from QFDonline https://qfdonline.com/templates/
• AHP: There are free online evaluators, e.g. http://www.easyahp.com/ or the open source tool on Github - https://github.com/ComcastSamples/ahp-tool 

Patent Searches

• Free account on https://www.lens.org/ . Provides excellent analysis dashboards.  

Commercialisation roadmaps 

• You can adapt the product roadmaps on Lucidchart - https://www.lucidchart.com/pages/templates/product-roadmap or Miro -https://miro.com/templates/product-roadmap/   

Business Modelling

 ‘Board of Innovation’s’ business model toolkit on Miro offers an excellent ecosystem of icons: https://miro.com/miroverse/the-business-model-kit/

Pictures or images:

References:

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