Course Content: 

This seminar provides a hands-on introduction to entrepreneurial thinking and acting. Students will be guided through a structured, evidence-based process, from identifying a first business idea to designing a validated business model. This simulates the early stages of a start-up journey, culminating in an investor-style pitch. Working in interdisciplinary teams, participants will ideate, test, and refine their concepts using real-world methods and tools.

Starting from team formation and problem exploration, students will learn how to discover and validate customer needs. They will design and test hypotheses through customer interviews and rapid experiments, build Value Proposition and Business Model Canvases, and analyze unit economics and go-to-market options.

The seminar emphasizes teamwork, evidence-based decision-making, and communication skills. By the end, each team will deliver a tested business concept, a concise pitch deck, and an investor-style presentation.

Learning Objectives

After completing this seminar, students will have learned and actually practiced the whole business model development process. In particular this means that students will know:

• Develop core entrepreneurial skills through practice.
• Understand how to create and validate customer value.
• Learn to derive, prioritize, and test business hypotheses.
• Translate ideas into viable business models and economics.
• Build and test low-fidelity prototypes to generate evidence.
• Gain experience in pitching and convincing stakeholders with evidence.

Format & Deliverables:

• 2.5 days of in-class sessions (inputs, team sprints, coaching).
• Homework assignments between sessions (interviews, experiments, prototyping, deck iterations).
• Final deliverables: team pitch, pitch deck, evidence dossier, and reflection.

Target group:

Bachelor students

Credentials:

Registration is via the Wiwi portal.

Registration is via the Wiwi portal.

In the seminar you will work on a project in teams of 4-5 persons. The groups are formed in the seminar.