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Idea Mining Workshop​

Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani (BITS Pilani)

Arya Kumar, Professor

Prof Arya Kumar did his M.A. (Hons) in Economics in First class First in 1977 and PhD in the area of “Financial Management of Higher Education in India” in 1982 from Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani. He has a diversified experience for more than 42 years of serving in educational institutions, research organizations, Banks and Financial Institutions. He is presently Professor and Dean Alumni Relations at BITS, Pilani. He served as Director between 2014 -2016 at Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management New Delhi. He has made distinct contributions in building entrepreneurship eco-system on campus, promoting patent driven research endeavours on the part of faculty and building strong networking with BITS Alumni across globe. He has published several research papers in national and international journals. He has co-authored four books in the area of Entrepreneurship, General Management, and Ethics in Management.

Purpose

The workshop aims to cultivate students’ entrepreneurship and ideation skills to create a social business plan within the framework of SDGs.

Overview

The purpose of this workshop is to practice entrepreneurship. Student teams are expected to create a technology/product based startup and write a business plan including all the building blocks of creating a social enterprise within the overall framework of Sustainable Development Goals. The workshop would cover broad spectrum of business issues in start-up creation – product development, market research, technology viability, fund raising, team formation, growth challenges and exit options. It is expected that participants at the end of the workshop would be able to assess their competencies and gain knowledge to translate it into real life situation to implement a business plan.

Course duration

5 Days – 3rd, 4th, 5th, 10th and 11th September 2021 Per day work: 4.5 hours. (Exact schedule of timings would be communicated later)

Participants

Approx. 10 master or doctoral students in the Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering.

Course design

Session 1: Workshop Overview & Objectives

  • Purpose
  • Ice Breaking
  • What is Venture Creation?
  • Individual & Team expectations

Session 2: Why and What of Entrepreneurship?

  • Entrepreneurship as a career
  • What it takes to be an entrepreneur
  • Impact as an entrepreneur
  • Social Entrepreneurship and SDG

Session 3: Idea to Opportunity

  • Learn creative problem solving – social issues.
  • Idea vs. Opportunity
  • Understanding target customer
  • Evaluating an Opportunity

Session 4: Learn Business Models in Social Business

  • Understand Business and Revenue Model
  • Challenges in Social Entrepreneurship
  • Impact assessment
  • Scaling through technology solution

Session 5: Understand the Hypothesis and Validations on the Business Plan

  • Business plan – what, when and for whom?
  • Business plan drivers
  • Various facets of BP – market, management team, financial requirements, risks involved, and exit strategy
  • Why plan fails?

Session 6: Intellectual Property

  • Intellectual property and the various categories
  • Government regulations at the global, country and regional level
  • IP issues across industry verticals

Session 7: Pitch Deck – Customer validation

Session 8: Market Sizing and Hypothesize about Business Models

  • Identifying target markets and market segments
  • Sizing your market
  • Market analysis vs. marketing Business models and pricing approaches as a startup
  • Differences across industries viz. hi-tech, life sciences, clean tech etc.

Session 9: Creating & Presenting a Pitch Deck & Business Plan

  • Purpose of pitch deck & business plan
  • Constituents of pitch deck
    Sections of a business plan
  • Presenting an effective pitch
  • Elevator pitch – problem, size of problem, solution

Session 10: Product Development

  • Product definition and Product differentiation
  • Assessing technical risks
  • Product plan and timelines for major milestones
  • Development resources required to complete design, specification and production

Session 11: Building the Startup Team

  • Understanding your strengths and gaps
  • Common selection criteria
  • How to attract, organize, inspire, motivate talent
  • Creating an innovative culture
  • Compensation and stock
  • Advisory board

Session 12 & 13: Financial and Financing of a Plan

  • Assumptions to chalk out Financial Statements
  • Profit vs Cash Generation
  • Important Financial Ratios and implications
  • Obtaining capital – how to do it; and what investors are really looking for
  • Options: Bootstrapping vs. angels vs. VCs
  • How much to raise, when to raise

Session 14 & 15: Developing Business Strategy – Launching and Growth of Business

  • New Venture launch and Managing Early Growth
  • Steps involved in launching a business
  • Raising different resources
  • Motivating and inspiring a team
  • Understanding technology trends, managing cash,
  • Record keeping
  • Managing Growth –
  • Venture development stages, why entrepreneurs do not scale up?

Pedagogy for Learning

The pedagogy used in this course would focus on learning by doing and learning by interactions. The efforts of the instructor would be to:

  • Facilitate discussions, interactions through exercises, games, case lets, cases and videos to enable participants to understand the importance and relevance of entrepreneurship in the present era.
  • Develop skills to pitch their ideas for meeting their goals to raise finance.
  • Above all, to create an entrepreneurial environment that encourages participants to have zeal to learn by asking questions.

Deliverables

The workshop shall enable the participants to acquire and equip themselves with requisite knowledge and skills to start and run a business successfully, which is divided into personal skills (entrepreneurial skills) and those to start a company (Start-up tools).

Grading

  • 10% class participation (including responses to class surveys)
  • 25% Assignments
  • 20% Business Plan submissions (including business plan sections, pitch deck etc.)
  • 10% first presentation
  • 15% final business plan presentation
  • 20% Examination

Faculty Profile

Arya Kumar, Professor

Prof Arya Kumar did his M.A. (Hons) in Economics in First class First in 1977 and PhD in the area of “Financial Management of Higher Education in India” in 1982 from Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani. He has a diversified experience for more than 42 years of serving in educational institutions, research organizations, Banks and Financial Institutions. He is presently Professor and Dean Alumni Relations at BITS, Pilani. He served as Director between 2014 -2016 at Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management New Delhi. He has made distinct contributions in building entrepreneurship eco-system on campus, promoting patent driven research endeavours on the part of faculty and building strong networking with BITS Alumni across globe. He has published several research papers in national and international journals. He has co-authored four books in the area of Entrepreneurship, General Management, and Ethics in Management.

He has successfully completed “Workshop on Technology Entrepreneurship Education – Theory and Practice “ organised by Lester Center for Entrepreneurship, Berkeley, Indo US Science & Technology Forum, DST, Govt. of India and Intel; Entrepreneurship Educators Course (EEC) jointly organised by STVP, Stanford University, IIM Bangalore and National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN); Goldman Sach 10,000 Women Programme: Tools for Growing your Business organised by NEN in collaboration with London Business School; and Accelerated Commercialization of Technology Innovation organized by Venture Centre, NCL, Innovation Park in association with Accelerator India, Cambridge University. He is a member of the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) India Faculty Advisory Board and expert member Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), Department of Biotechnology Government of India. He has been honoured with distinguished faculty award in recognition and appreciation of his dedication, interest, enthusiasm and attitude in accomplishing his assigned mission of teaching by BITSAA International in 2011, Global Excellence Award for Outstanding Contribution to Management Education – 2012 by Management Teachers Consortium (MTC) and Entrepreneurship Educator and Mentor Special Jury Award for promotion of Entrepreneurship Education by National Entrepreneurship Network in collaboration with Ministry of Skill and Entrepreneurship Development, British Council and Intel in 2015.