Entrepreneurship Summer School

Process

Each of the Summer School sessions will engage you in learning and putting to work one or more of the skills you’ll need to assess, shape, and present an entrepreneurial opportunity and to become a successful entrepreneur. For most of these skills, you’ll have multiple chances to apply them, first in a case discussion or other exercise; and then solo (or in pairs), as you work to assess and shape your opportunity.

Outcome

Prior to and during the Entrepreneurship Summer School, participants will:

• Develop a personal mission statement
• Develop (working solo or in pairs) a customer-driven feasibility study for a proposed new venture of their choosing, either a start-up or a new venture within an established firm. This feasibility study will (based on primary and secondary data to be collected before and during the programme) assess and shape the opportunity. In doing so it will:
  • Identify and rigorously assess the overall and target markets
  • Assess industry attractiveness and the likelihood that the venture can achieve sustainable competitive advantage
  • Seek to develop a viable business model
  • Identify the critical success factors that an entrepreneurial team must possess to successfully pursue the opportunity and assess the proposed team’s ability to meet them.

The resulting output, for opportunities judged feasible, is intended to form the basis for assembling a management team and developing a business plan and ultimately, a new venture itself. For opportunities judged not feasible, the output will provide a helpful foundation for reshaping the opportunity (perhaps to serve a different market or apply the technology differently) or for deciding to move on to a more promising opportunity.

• Assessing Opportunities
• Researching Entrepreneurial Opportunities and Building Your Network
• Locating the Known Unknowns: Where to Focus Your Energy
• So, You Want to Be an Entrepreneur?
• Uncovering Your Unknown Unknowns
• Is Your Business Model Viable?
• You, The Entrepreneur
• Customer Insights
• Elevator Pitch and Email Workshop
• ‘Power Networking’ Workshop
• Legal Issues for Entrepreneurs
• Financing Issues
• Presentation Skills
• Getting to Plan B

There are three submissions required in advance for admission to Entrepreneurship Summer School (deadline 15 May unless capacity remains thereafter):

• Personal Mission Statement: Clarity about your personal mission, aspirations and propensity for risk will have an enormous influence on the nature of your entrepreneurial vision, as well as your ability to realize it. This statement (500-700 words) should set out what you would like to achieve with your life, as much on a personal as on a professional level, why you would like to achieve this, and any fears concerning what this may take.

Remember, this is your PERSONAL mission statement, and will be uniquely special – there are no right or wrong answers. The clearer, and more honest, you are about it, the better equipped you will be to contemplate the life of an entrepreneur.

• Executive Summary: We need two versions of this document one of 100 words, the other a SINGLE PowerPoint slide (containing no more than 30 words in aggregate). These summaries force you to think through the essence of the opportunity and tell us what it’s about, thereby helping us to make sense of the macro-analysis. However, they serve a more important purpose:
• The 100-word versions are compiled into a single document and used to brief mentors, speakers, and participants about your opportunity and help them spot ways in which they might help you.
• The 30-word PowerPoint slide is used during the mentor-matching

Both of these versions should summarise the opportunity with clarity and enthusiasm – in some senses, they constitute the first ‘marketing’ literature for a nascent business. They should summarise the customer’s need and how you intend to satisfy that need.

• Macro-level market and industry analysis: This analysis, based on the opportunity you intend to examine and develop during the Entrepreneurship Summer School (no consultancies or single-location retail businesses please), should not exceed three A4- sides of paper plus one page of cited secondary data sources. It should be focused solely on the relevant two portions of the seven domains framework (macro market, macro industry) and should, using relevant secondary data you gather and cite: candidly assess the attractiveness of both your intended market and your intended industry at the macro level, by gathering whatever secondary data your feasibility study will require and citing each source, so that your efforts in Summer School can focus entirely on primary

The course is ideal for:

• HR heads and personnel.
• Individuals who want to kick start a career in human resource management.
• Existing and new HR staff.
• Individuals/professionals seeking career diversification.
• Individuals considering a certification in human resource management.

Places in the summer school are through application in advance and are filled on a rolling basis. For further information, please visit: info@docentibusinessschool.com