Postgraduate Course: CodeBase Bridge: Playbooks for Building Startups (fusion on-site) (EFIE11143)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh Futures Institute |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 10 |
ECTS Credits | 5 |
| Summary | CodeBase Bridge is a course for students who want to learn about technology start-up thinking, innovation and entrepreneurship. The course is an introduction for students with early-stage start-up ideas, or who are just at the beginning of that ideation process. The course focuses on three key things: helping you turn an idea into a sustainable business; breaking down barriers to the start-up world by demystifying the jargon around tech entrepreneurship; and sharing toolkits and frameworks of product and service innovation to give students the power to respond to fast change and cultivate resilience in a turbulent world. |
| Course description |
Following the EFI model, the course will consist of a pre-intensive period that will introduce students to the principles of start-up culture through a series of pre-recorded videos from CodeBase member companies and entrepreneurs that have been through the start-up process. The pre-intensive period will also organise students into teams, followed by a fusion bonding experience that will galvanise them ready for the intensive sessions. Discussion boards will help students to de-mystify any jargon that they encounter.
The intensive two-day sessions will be delivered in fusion form, with students remaining in their teams. The sessions will pursue four core concepts:
1. Markets: Introductory lecture on technology markets and research, followed by challenge-based exercise in defining a social innovation opportunity.
2. Understanding Your Customers and Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) theory and its difference to other service innovation methods, introduced with a live lecture followed by group work applying JTBD theory to their idea.
3. Learning loops will be introduced with a situated example and lecture followed by group exercise in lean experimentation methods to test business ideas with real customers.
4. Business models & funding strategies will be covered by a lecture followed by an introduction to the role of pitching and Pitch Decks.
Throughout the intensive days, peer learning and development will be supported by semi-structured networking sessions to retain a sense of teamwork toward the development of a hypothetical product/service. Group pitches will provide an iterative opportunity for teams to 'play back' their ideas at the end of each intensive day, with feedback provided by other class members. By the end of day two, teams will be inspired toward an idea for a new product or service, and have insight into the tools to make it more likely to become valuable if it were pursued.
The post-intensive period will consist of individuals in each team electing to take one particular aspect of the core concepts: markets, JTBD, learning loops and business models/ investment, and develop a response that demonstrate insight and understanding.
This course is complementary to other courses that sit within the EFI portfolio that address entrepreneurship such as the EFIE11068 / EFIE11069 Education Technology & Entrepreneurship. Key differences across this course and EFIE11068 / EFIE11069 Education Technology & Entrepreneurship are the different ways in which both course place emphasis upon different aspects of Entrepreneurship. This course focused upon the development of playbooks with involvement from industrial partners and is co-led by CodeBase (Scottish based incubator), whilst the Education Technology & Entrepreneurship course focuses upon value creation and ethical tensions for products within a particular sector (Education).
Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) - On-Site Fusion Course Delivery Information:
The Edinburgh Futures Institute will teach this course in a way that enables online and on-campus students to study together. This approach (our 'fusion' teaching model) offers students flexible and inclusive ways to study, and the ability to choose whether to be on-campus or online at the level of the individual course. It also opens up ways for diverse groups of students to study together regardless of geographical location. To enable this, the course will use technologies to record and live-stream student and staff participation during their teaching and learning activities.
Students should be aware that:
- Classrooms used in this course will have additional technology in place: students might not be able to sit in areas away from microphones or outside the field of view of all cameras.
- Unless the lecturer or tutor indicates otherwise you should assume the session is being recorded.
As part of your course, you will need access to a personal computing device. Unless otherwise stated activities will be web browser based and as a minimum we recommend a device with a physical keyboard and screen that can access the internet.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2022/23, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 20 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
100
(
Lecture Hours 5,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 8,
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 3,
Formative Assessment Hours 0.5,
Summative Assessment Hours 0.5,
Other Study Hours 3,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
78 )
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| Additional Information (Learning and Teaching) |
Other Study Hours: Scheduled group-work Hours
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Formative (group assessment): Lean canvas delivered at the end of each day of the 2-day intensive sessions presented by the group, and reviewed by peers and tutors immediately following presentation.
Summative (individual assessment): The post-intensive period will consist of individuals in each team electing to take one particular aspect of the core concepts: markets, JTBD, learning loops and business models/ investment, and develop a response that demonstrate insight and understanding:
1. Markets: write a market research report (1000 words) focusing on customer problems and existing solutions
2. Jobs To Be Done: Carry out a small number of Jobs To Be Done interviews and write a short research report (1000 words) on findings and insight
3. Learning loops: Design and (if possible) carry out a simple experiment to test your riskiest assumption / hypothesis and write an insight report (1000 words).
4. Business model / investment: Either create a lean canvas for your proposed business and write a commentary on it OR create an investor pitch deck to raise your first round (and submit a recording of you delivering a pitch). |
| Feedback |
Intensive: Following the presentation of the pitch decks at the end of each intensive day, tutors and peers will provide instant feedback in the form of post-its that highlight strengths and weaknesses in the ideas.
Post-Intensive: Groups will be formed around each of the core concepts associated with the development of new products and services: markets, Jobs To Be Done, Build-Measure-Learn and business models/ investment. These groups will provide peer support and feedback toward the production of the final individual summative submission.
Feedback will also be provided by staff within 15 working days of submission. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate a critical understanding for the principal theories, concepts and principles within start-up culture;
- Critically review, consolidate and extend knowledge and thinking across an aspect of entrepreneurship derived from exposure to 'real world' start-up companies;
- Communicate with peers, more senior colleagues and specialists, using key terminology to explain a core concept within start-up culture;
- Demonstrate the ability to explain with coherence and critical insight the opportunities and limitations that a particular concept will allow a start-up company to succeed.
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Reading List
Essential Reading:
The lean startup : how constant innovation creates radically successful businesses / Eric Ries. London, England: Portfolio Penguin; 2011
Disciplined entrepreneurship 24 steps to a successful startup / Bill Aulet. Hoboken, NJ : Wiley; 2013
Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice / Clayton M. Christensen, Karen Dillon, Taddy Hall, David S. Duncan. Harper Business; 2016
The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from their Founding Entrepreneurs / David S. Kidder. Chronicle Books LLC; 2012
How to Think for Yourself, Paul Graham; 2020. Web link: http://paulgraham.com/think.html
Do Things that Don't Scale, Paul Graham; 2013. Web link: http://paulgraham.com/ds.html
How to Lose Time and Money, Paul Graham; 2010. Web link: http://paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html
The Soul of a Start-Up, Ranjay Gulati; 2019. Web link: https://hbr.org/2019/07/the-soul-of-a-start-up
Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value / Teresa Torres. Product Talk LLC.
Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It / April Dunford. London: Ambient Press
Recommended Reading:
Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works / Ash Maurya. London, O'Reilly Media, 2012
Sense & respond: how successful organizations listen to customers and create new products continuously. Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden. American Library Association CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, 2017-06-01, Vol.54 (10), p.1541
This Is Service Design Methods: A Companion to This Is Service Design Doing / Marc Stinkdorn and Markus Edgar Hormess. London, O'Reilly, 2018.
Further Paul Graham essays: http://paulgraham.com/articles.html
Further Reading:
The hard thing about hard things: building a business when there are no easy answers / Ben Horowitz.
Horowitz, Ben, author. HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY; 2014
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an eternal golden braid / Douglas R. Hofstadter. Hofstadter, Douglas R., 1945- London: Penguin; 2000 |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
1. Students will develop a critical awareness of theories, concepts and principles that support the development of new products and services within the contemporary culture of entrepreneurship and technology start-ups (SQ Characteristic 1).
2. Students will apply knowledge, skills and understanding gained from lectures and activities provided by entrepreneurs who have had direct experience of starting their own technology business, into the speculative development of their own company (SQ Characteristic 2).
3. Students will gain cognitive skills by applying the one or more core concepts that underpin the development of a successful product or service to their own speculative company (SQ Characteristic 3).
4. Students will develop communication, ICT and analytic skills through the presentation of ideas and principles within their teams and to other teams through the use of 'pitch decks', and through a summative essay (SQ Characteristic 4).
5. Students will gain autonomy, accountability and learn to work with others by collaborating in small groups to develop a speculative company, including the development of a shared discussion boards and through the design of a new product or service (SQ Characteristic 5). |
| Keywords | CodeBase,Tech Startup,Entrepreneurship |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Prof Chris Speed
Tel: (0131 6)51 5747
Email: c.speed@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mr David Murphy
Tel:
Email: dmurphy7@ed.ac.uk |
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