This course provides a disciplined step-by-step approach to assessing the business potential of research projects and transforming them into a product. Scientists and engineers equipped with an entrepreneurial mindset can see the bigger picture, faster recognize opportunities, and create value for society. This course will tackle the misconceptions about what entrepreneurship is and what is required to become an entrepreneur/sciencepreneur and will give you the tools and knowledge necessary to gather market insights, understand your customer and non-customer, create value and visualize your growth opportunities. The course is designed for Phd students and is divided into 5 modules:
Module 1 - Introduction to Entrepreneurship
This module will tackle what to expect when transforming research into a product and spinning off and, as well, will offer insights into the TU Wien Innovation Ecosystem and the support you can receive for this purpose.
Lecturers:
Dr. Birgit Hofreiter
Initiator and Head of the Innovation Incubation Center (i²c), the Competence Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at TU Wien and founder of the TUW i²nkubator.
With a doctorate in Business Informatics, she spent several years at research institutions abroad before accepting an offer from TU Wien in 2011 to develop a qualification program for entrepreneurial education for students and scientists. Within a few years, this resulted in one of the leading university institutions for the promotion of university spin-offs in Europe. Author of numerous scientific papers, member on the steering committee of scientific conferences, active as a national and international reviewer, member of various advisory boards and mentor and coach for start-up projects and qualification programs.
Dipl. Ing. Alexandra Negoescu
I enjoy working with brilliant scientists and engineers to create disruptive shifts across industries. Over the past years at the TU Wien Innovation Incubation Center, I’ve been focusing on helping TU Wien scientists and engineers assess the business potential of their research projects and, through the incubation program, help them bring their research to society.
Guest speakers: representatives from the TU Wien RTI departments introducing the support and services offered by their service units.
Module 2 - Building the A Team
What do you have to consider when building your team? From founder alignment to equity split and analyzing the skills you are missing and need to onboard, this module will offer you insights into the biggest challenges teams face at this early stage and equip you with the skills needed to overcome them.
Lecturers:
MSc. Lukas Rippitsch
Lukas Rippitsch is the CEO of Speedinvest Heroes. He aims to help his team constantly outperform stakeholder expectations with a clear focus on making processes more efficient and to guarantee client satisfaction. Having started his career in the investment banking sector, Lukas discovered his passion for combining big chunks of data, econometrics and his social skills to solve complex solutions. A set of forensic skills, translation skills (software engineering team vs. normal people) and a good sense of diplomacy are the pillars of this professional career.
Dipl. Ing. Alexandra Negoescu
I enjoy working with brilliant scientists and engineers to create disruptive shifts across industries. Over the past years at the TU Wien Innovation Incubation Center, I’ve been focusing on helping TU Wien scientists and engineers assess the business potential of their research projects and, through the incubation program, help them bring their research to society.
Guest speakers: TUW i²ncubator Founders
Module 3 - From Innovation to a Business Case
The roadmap to building a business concept around your technology starts with understanding who your potential customers are and making a market analysis. The module will also offer you insights into various business model archetypes and offer you the toolset needed to create your first business model and go-to-market strategy.
Lecturers:
Dipl. Ing. Alexandra Negoescu
I enjoy working with brilliant scientists and engineers to create disruptive shifts across industries. Over the past years at the TU Wien Innovation Incubation Center, I’ve been focusing on helping TU Wien scientists and engineers assess the business potential of their research projects and, through the incubation program, help them bring their research to society.
Dr. Slaven Stekovic, MBA is a serial entrepreneur, scientist and book author in the areas of longevity, robotics, AI drug discovery and age-related diseases. He has founded several successful companies and is serving on the boards of multiple organizations in the areas of life science, education, chemical engineering, construction materials and consumer products. Slaven is an active business angel and venture capitalist focusing on IP-heavy, early-stage companies in the UK, Austria and the Balkans. He holds degrees from the University of Graz and the University of Cambridge and has been teaching at multiple European universities for almost a decade.
Module 4 - Defining your Minimum Viable Product
This module will cover the customer development stage and financial planning. You will learn approaches for understanding the key features your product should have and build your first financial plan.
Lecturers:
DI Joachim Techt is a digital strategist, creator and product team builder. He is a father of two, curious and calm and an associative thinker with a like for organizing teams. He works as consultant and in projects for both, small start-ups and large corporates (and everything that is in between) on product innovation and strategy, foundation and development of product teams with a user-centristic view and establishing a structured and self-organized style of work. Before that, Joachim spent 6 years at Runtastic (now adidas Runtastic) - constantly being part of the management team and by that co-creating one of the biggest Austrian start-up success stories. As VP of Product he led product strategy and the Product Management and UI/UX teams. Prior to that, he worked at Die Presse on the future of digital journalism and monetization strategies. Joachim's original background is in Interactive Media Design where he did his master and working as a designer hereafter.
MIM Petra Grozik is CEO at TheVentury and all about bringing a goal-oriented mindset to organizations. Within her role at TheVentury, she is deeply involved in finance & operations topics, as well as organisational design. In this role, she is making sure to enable the company to be set up for scale. In her work with startups and early-stage founders, she focuses on financial planning, business modelling and goal setting. She holds lectures at universities, incubators and accelerators and coaches founders around these topics. She is involved in the female factor network and passionate about sharing her knowledge and interests with the community.
Module 5 - Presenting your Technolgy to Non-Experts
Now that you have a good understanding of your customer, market, MVP, and go-to-market strategy, it is time to articulate clearly your business concept.
Lecturer:
M.B.A Daniel Cronin
Daniel is an entrepreneur, lecturer, TV presenter and keynote speaker. He started his entrepreneurial career as co-founder of allaboutapps, a joint venture of i5invest and runtastic and in the past 10 years has strongly helped shape the Austrian startup ecosystem.He has been given the honorary title of “The Pitch Professor” by the Vienna University of Technology Innovation Incubation Center (i2c), created the Train-the-Trainer program for the European Innovation Council (EIC) on pitching and became the first person to pitch in freefall. Today he is considered as one of the leading experts and trainers on pitching, having helped scientists, entrepreneurs and executives communicate and present their ideas, values and beliefs more effectively. He lectures at several universities including the Vienna University of Technology and the Vienna University of Economics and Business as well as the Medical University Vienna.As moderator and MC he has hosted more than 300 events on startups and innovation including the Pioneers Festival, Bits & Pretzels, the FifteenSeconds Festival, Podim, The Spark – Der Deutsche Digitalpreis” (The German Digital Awards) as well as Audi MQ! and Red Bull Basement.
The student has to be enrolled for at least one of the studies listed below
