Below you will find the list of the course's compulsory assignments, with details about what is expected and how the assignments will be graded.
Some assignments will be done and submitted by each student, individually. The term project and its deliverables will be done by teams of students,
where each team should have no less than three and no more than four participants. All team members will receive the same grade. Splitting or
rearrangement of teams will not be accepted after the third week of classes, so make sure that you have in place from the beginning clear
decision-making and conflict resolution processes.
Reading Assignment and Book write-up
Each student is assigned a reading from the following reading list of books:
Ben Horowitz. "The Hard Thing about Hard Things." Harper Business, 2014.
Clayton Christensen. "The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of
Innovation and Change)." Harvard Business Review Press, 2016.
Brad Stone. “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon.” Corgi, 2014.
Steven Levy. "In the Plex." Simon & Schuster, 2011.
Peter Thiel with Blake Masters. “Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future.” Virgin Books,
2015.
Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne, Sangeet Paul
Choudary. "Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy and How to Make
Them Work for You." W. W. Norton & Company, 2016.
Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace. "Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True
Inspiration." Random House 2014.
Kai-Fu Lee. "AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order." Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
2018.
Each student is expected to compose and deliver a write-up for their reading assignment,
comprising:
A summary of the assigned book;
A description of an idea from their reading that they found novel and/or surprising and that they want to
implement in their own project, explaining the reasoning behind this decision;
A novel and/or key idea from their reading that they would choose
not
to implement in their own project, explaining the reasoning behind this decision.
Grading of writing assignments will be based on their clarity, reasoning, and depth, as described
below:
Clarity (30 points) comes from clear writing, good structure, and meticulous editing of the
text.
The paper receives:
5 points, if writing quality is poor and careless, with no real structure in the text.
20 points, if writing quality is good and the paper is logically structured. A few misspellings/grammar
mistakes but not enough to be completely distracting.
30 points, if writing quality is great, the structure/logic is very clear and enhances the arguments, the
paper reads very well. Little to no grammar or misspelling mistakes.
Reasoning (30 points): Reasoning is based on good arguments, which are typically established
upon specific phrases or passages that support the claims given. Therefore, it is expected that arguments are
properly
substantiated with accurate references. The paper receives:
5 points, if arguments are weak and unfounded.
15 points, if arguments are supported by a couple of examples but not enough to make a truly compelling
argument.
30 points, if arguments are supported by various specific examples. It is obvious the student put a lot of
thought into constructing a solidly constructed argument.
Depth (40 points) means that the text contains original ideas and observations, and succeeds
in teaching its readers something new. The paper receives:
5 points, if observations are very shallow and/or trivial.
20 points, if the paper provides a mix of both shallow and more insightful observations.
40 points, if the paper provides original and insightful observations, and the student teaches the reader
something new.
Guest Lectures' write-ups
Students are expected to submit at least three write-ups after attending a selection of guest
lectures, which are part of the Series
of Lectures in Innovation and Entrepreneurship (KEP101) of the Centre for Entrepreneurship. Besides the lectures organized in the
context of KEP101, the Centre may announce in its Facebook Page,
talks or seminars organised by other entities, inside or outside the University, which are labeled as "C4E101 Approved." You are entitled
to attend these lectures and submit a writeup about them, alternatively.
In each write-up, the points you need to address are:
What are the three most useful things that you learned from this guest speaker or session that you didn't know
before, or that you hadn't thought about much before, and that you think you are likely to carry with you going forward?
What surprised you most?
What did you like most about the speaker or the session?
What did you not like most about the speaker or session?
Do you think we should invite this speaker back in future semesters? Any other reasons than the above why or why not?
Short case study
Students are expected to submit a short case study. The topic will be announced during the class. The case study will be an essay
of a few pages, analysing some interesting innovation brought to market, using the Business Model Canvas or other methodologies.
Group project
Students are expected to establish teams and develop an idea with a strong
exploitation potential through a business venture or a social enterprise. The teams are required to undertake
all necessary activities to develop a strong business and technology development plan and prepare a final oral
presentation to seek funding (Venture Capital pitch). The Group project comprise three deliverables:
Midterm report: This presents the first layout of the business model and product
offering, and is expected to evolve throughout the semester as each team validates its initial hypotheses.
For the second half of the semester, each team is expected to interact with real customers, partners,
providers etc to evaluate its business model, in addition to developing its product offering.
Oral Presentation: This is a "Venture Capital Pitch," to be presented in a 10-minutes
oral presentation, followed by a Q&A session. The pitch should be prepared according to guidelines and
best practices discussed in class and relevant readings. The presentation should be a self-contained
document (often called a "deck") with no more than
10 slides
, which should be read-able
if you email it to someone. All members of each team should participate in the presentation.
Written Final report: The final report should present a comprehensive summary of
achievements. Its structure should comprise two sections:
The first section is a critical appraisal of the midterm report, describing and explaining what has
changed since the
midterm report was written, and detailing how your ideas have evolved.
The second section, provides a description of progress made since the midterm report in developing your
product, conducting market research and evaluating your business model. Also, a
description of your prototype implementation and your technology stack.
Announcements of Assignments
All announcements will be performed through the class' Online Forum on Piazza.
