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Explore your entrepreneurial ambitions and work on your own business idea with the help of experienced entrepreneurs and team coaches.

What’s in it for me? 
Following this minor will help you explore your entrepreneurial ambitions and even kickstart your own company, which is especially interesting when you choose to do an entrepreneurship graduation project after this minor.   

From start to finish, you will use an entrepreneurial scan that measures how you are doing as an entrepreneur (your Drive). You will have 1-1 conversations with your coach and an interview with an experienced entrepreneur. 

• You are able to translate the overall business challenge into a business case.
• You understand processes of ideation, generating a variety of alternative solutions to specific problems, or responses to opportunities.
• You will be able to select a business case from the options generated. Based on viability (financial plan), desirability (marketing, sales) and feasibility (organisation, value network).
• And you will be aware of your personal development in relation to entrepreneurship.

• The minor Building your own Business is intended for students who are in the 4th year of their programme. You choose this minor if you are a motivated, proactive young professional, with an entrepreneurial mindset.
• The minor is entirely in English. Bear in mind that you will be working long hours. Most weeks you will have lectures in the morning and time to work on your projects in the afternoon.
• Propaedeutic certificate obtained.

You will be assessed on successfully completing the following:  

• Boost Camp – presentation (2 ECTS)
• Team up for Business challenge (4 ECTS)
• My Dream – individual project (14 ECTS)
• Written exam (4 ECTS)
• Drive – individual project (6 ECTS) 

Competencies

Inspiration phase: 

• Identify and apply qualitative trend research
• Identify and apply qualitative and quantitative research on market segmentation (TAM, SAM, SOM), identify competition and sector/value network. Qualitative research on user profiling: human centered design research, persona’s, customer journey

Ideation phase: 

• Idea finding and idea production
• Creative skills
• Creativity in organizations
• Prototyping and prototype testing Scenario thinking

Implementation phase: 

• Develop, create and test online marketing, concept statements, value network analysis, financial management, pricing strategy, revenue modelling.

Drive: 

• Develop entrepreneurial competencies, creative and entrepreneurial skills in order to generate and produce new initiatives for businesses. Amongst others: reflective, planning, goal setting, leadership, risk taking, networking and team working skills.

Topics
In the Building your own Business minor, you will learn how to carry out market and target research, how to develop a business plan, and in what creative and resilient way to market your product.   

Your Dream (read: My Dream) is central in the programme. You will work on your own business idea by attending classes, workshops and Q&A's with experienced entrepreneurs, and weekly team meetings. Also, you will have regular 1:1 meetings about your personal development with your Drive coach.  

The first weeks  
The minor starts with a boost camp. In two weeks’ time, your team will set up a business case for a start-up company, such as Greenjoy, an electric boats company wanting to expand its market and Meet Jack, a company wanting to introduce jackfruit into a b2c market. 

After that, you will dive into a business challenge in which your team works on a real challenge for a company (3 weeks)

You will have classes on practical entrepreneurship, covering topics like administration, import and export and networking, and a guest lecture on trademark law by the renowned agency Arnold & Siedsma.   

My dream 
After the first few weeks, it's time to start your individual project. In recent years, students came up with all kinds of business ideas, such as a vegan lunch spot, a jewellery brand and a new video game. In twelve weeks’ time, you go through the design circle: inspiration, ideation and implementation.   

In the inspiration phase, you do desk and field research. You explore how to monitor sustainability, what trends there are in the market and you perform research to generate business case options. 

In the ideation phase, you try to look at alternatives and come up with other creative ideas. You dig through all the research data to come up with several good ideas. 

In the implementation phase, you work on your marketing and financial plans. The final product is your plan, which you present to your lecturers at the end of the minor.   

Halfway, ‘Global Entrepreneurship Week’ takes place with guest speakers and Q&=A’s. Just search on Google for Loeihard, Sassybot or Twirlbound to get an idea of visiting companies. You will also attend several external workshops of your choice, for example sales, marketing or sustainability. 

Structure of minor
Students work on their personal development in the Drive part during the 20 weeks. Each student has access to a personal coach and a project coach. According to the design cycle model of Tim Brown the course consists of 3 modules: Inspiration, Ideation and implementation. 

Teaching method(s):
Interactive tutorials, coach meetings, business simulation, milestone meetings and guest lectures

International context
Business Cases are focusing on an international business challenge

Costs
€ 29 for Escan (Entrepreneurial Scan)