Undergraduate Course: Planning for a start-up (BUST08040)
Course Outline
| School | Business School |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 8 (Year 1 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Planning for a start-up is a practical course that asks you to work in entrepreneurial teams to come up with a business idea, pitch it and then write a feasibility plan for your business idea. Your business idea can either be for a social enterprise or for-profit. You can locate your business anywhere in the world.
Through sessions and group clinics, you will learn how to generate start-up ideas, and how to implement and execute your business idea.
Core to this fundamental entrepreneurial process is learning about the role of entrepreneurs, how to evaluate if there is a fit between your idea and your customer, how to build a start-up business model, sell and market your business idea, and what are the sources of finance for your entrepreneurial start-up.
|
| Course description |
Academic Description:
Planning for a start-up is for first year students with limited or no experience of entrepreneurial processes. There is a particular emphasis on providing a practical hands-on approach to understanding how start-ups create, deliver and capture value for their customers.
Integral, therefore, is a systematic learning journey that first explains the entrepreneurial process and then, step-by-step, builds your understandings of how to generate business ideas, create a start-up business model, evaluate how you could sell and market your business idea, and subsequently fund the development of this business idea.
By the end of the course, you will be able to appreciate what is practically involved in setting up a start-up. This process gives you core skills in opportunity recognition, start-up business model development and working in a team setting to pitch and plan out how to go about pitching and planning a start-up idea.
Outline Content:
Planning for a start-up will cover:
- Introduction to the course
- The Entrepreneur
- Business Models
- Idea generation
- Product Market fit
- Sales and Marketing
- Competition and Business Infrastructure
- Sources of finance
- Financial plans
Student Learning Experience:
To support the course's learning journey are a series of sessions and clinics.
The 2-hour weekly sessions - aided by a small number of guest entrepreneurial talks - provide foundational knowledge that develops your understanding of how you can implement and execute your business idea.
Three clinics (ideas, business model, pitching) gives your group the opportunity to discuss and develop your business idea prior to pitching and writing up their feasibility plan.
Your group will also benefit from presenting how you will implement and execute their business idea in a pitch format. Through writing a group feasibility plan, you will also learn how to begin to produce a professionally produced plan for your business idea.
|
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Academic year 2021/22, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
|
Quota: 300 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 20,
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 6,
Feedback/Feedforward Hours 2,
Formative Assessment Hours 2,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
166 )
|
| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
|
| Additional Information (Assessment) |
There are two groupwork assessments and one individual essay:
1. A group pitch of the business idea (30%) including 20% peer assessment, and
2. A group feasibility plan (50%) of 2,500 words (excluding appendices), including 20% peer assessment
3. Individual Reflective Essay (20%)
For the group pitch, assessment is based on a mix of presentation and content. For the group plan, presentation and content are again important.
The group pitch asks students to present their idea (learning outcome 1), to critically assess its feasibility (learning outcome 2) and assess the resources required (learning outcome 3). The group feasibility plan asks students to build on the learning they have gained from their pitches and apply this to the evaluation of their idea (learning outcome 1), their start-up planning ((learning outcome 2) and the resources they need ((learning outcome 3).
|
| Feedback |
Students are given an initial formative assessment of their business idea in Week 5 of the course. In these idea clinics, practical advice is given on the potential viability of the idea and likely ways forward for developing their business idea. In Week 8, there is a second series of formative assessment through business model clinics which give advice on ways to take their business idea forward. Finally, in Week 11 there is an opportunity for students to gain feedback on their pitch prior to its delivery.
After the group pitches (Week 11) students are given detailed feedback on the positive, negatives and ways forward. They use this feedback to iterate their feasibility plan. Students then are given feedback on their pitch. They then use this to develop their plan, with a submission date in May.
|
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Generate and evaluate ideas for a start-up.
- Practically understand, integrate and critically evaluate key elements of start-up planning.
- Begin to be able to assess what types of outside resources are required for start-up.
- Critically reflect on the challenges of the start-up planning process.
|
Reading List
| Core text: Francis Greene, Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice, Macmillan Education, 2020. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Knowledge and Understanding:
- Practically understand start-up processes and planning
- Increased knowledge about how students can increase their knowledge about core business functions such as marketing, operations and finance;
Cognitive Skills:
- Generate and critically assess start-up business ideas;
- Assess the resources required to pursue a start-up idea;
- Develop planning with others to implement and execute a business idea;
- Locate and draw on materials/data from multiple sources of information to help assess start-up viability.
Transferable Skills:
- Work in groups to create a coherent start-up plan;
- Develop core report writing and presentation skills |
| Additional Class Delivery Information |
1 x weekly online lecture; 1 x online tutorial (1 hour) in Weeks 3-10. |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Mr Martin Gannon
Tel:
Email: Martin.Gannon@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mr Mark Woodfine-Jones
Tel: (0131 6)50 3825
Email: mark.woodfine-jones@ed.ac.uk |
|
|
University Homepage