This course represents the backbone of the teaching in the Entrepreneurship Certificate.
Its goal is to provide a thorough, hand-on, exposure to the entrepreneurial process as an inspirational experience for the future entrepreneur, but also as a core basic learning component to understand tomorrow’s world, useful to everybody.
It goes from exploring the subtle chemistry between science and innovation, identifying an opportunity, and understand how to analyze it, assess its potential, and structure it into a compelling business plan.
There is no lecture. The course uses an original format of flipped classroom, with online content, and in-class applied activities, around business case discussion based on start-up that originated from Ecole polytechnique.
Every session is broken down in 3 parts:
- Business case discussion, that relates to the online content assigned to the session.
- Testimonial from one guest speaker, expert, seasoned entrepreneur who comes in class, testify and discuss with the students.
- Project coaching: linked to the project module, it is based on a scientific project, carried out in a science course. And its goal is to work on a real-life start-up opportunity, that originated from the scientific project, and analyze it, structure it, develop it into a credible start-up project, with a fully developed business plan, which will be pitched, as a real case, in front of a jury of investors and entrepreneurs.
External coaches and mentors come and review each group weekly work and progress on their project, and their mission is to guide and help each project to tackle and overcome the key challenges that they will have to face to turn their idea into an attractive start-up. These coaches are seasoned investors, entrepreneurs.
- Teaching coordinator: Martinaud Bruno