MAI622: AI Entrepreneurship - Assignments

Assignments and Guidelines

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.

Guest Lectures' Reports

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?

Case study Report

Each student is expected to undertake the study of a chapter from one of the books by

• Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan (2021) "AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future"
• Eric Topol (2019), "Deep Medicine"

identify a business opportunity arising from the chapter's story, prepare and present a business model canvas for a startup targeting that opportunity. The report should comprise:

• A summary of the chapter (1 page long).
• An execute statement summarizing your proposal (1 page long).
• A completed business model canvas analyzing your idea.

Homeworks and Group project

Students working in groups of 3-4 people are expected to come up with an entrepreneurial idea driven by AI technology with a strong exploitation potential and explore its transformation into a business venture or a social enterprise. The teams are required to apply the 24 steps of the Disciplined Entrepreneurship methodology, to develop a strong business and technology development plan and prepare a final oral presentation to seek funding (Venture Capital pitch), which will be submitted for participation to the Student Innovators Competition SINN (see the SINN 2022 announcement for more information). The Group project comprise several deliverables that will be announced throughout the semester, and will include:

• Mission statement: A report on the mission statement of the envisioned company, which clarifies your purpose and planning.
• Midterm report: This presents the first layout of the business model and product offering, including a Business Model Canvas for your idea, and is expected to evolve throughout the semester as each team validates its initial hypotheses.
• Interim reports: These reports primarily comprise the completed DE24 worksheets for your term project and represent the outcome of your analysis as you follow the Disciplined Entrepreneurship Methodology, interacting with real customers, partners, providers etc to evaluate its business model. They should be submitted in the form of PDF files. The worksheets are available in the Disciplined Entrepreneurship website and you can also find them on Sharepoint.
• 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 10-20 slides, which should be read-able if you email it to someone. The presentation is expected to be submitted and presented at the Student Innovators Competition SINN, organized by the University's Centre for Entrepreneurship at the end of the spring semester (see the SINN 2022 announcement for more information). All members of each team should participate in the presentation.
• Final report: The final report should present a comprehensive summary of achievements. Its structure should comprise three sections:
  1. Section 1: Updated Mission Statement and summary of findings.
  2. Section 2: Business plan.
  3. Section 3: Progress report describing (indicatively) product/service/business development, market research, business model evaluation, prototype implementation, technology stack.
  4. Section 4: Appendix with completed Disciplined Entrepreneurship Worksheets.

Instructions and Advice

Teams

Group projects and their 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.

Grading

Grading of writing assignments and presentations 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) 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.