Seminar "The practice of entrepreneurship" - fall semester 2009

Seminar contents

This seminar aims at confronting students with problems and perspectives in entrepreneurship practice. The goal of the course is to enable students to effectively write their own business plan. Students will write an own business plan that may relate to either an original startup or an existing firm whose business potential is not yet fully explored. This business plan will be evaluated – and graded – by a team of industry professionals.

Jury members

- Christoph Adrian, Greissinger & Partner Business consultancy;

- Marc Girardelli, Marc Girardelli

- Ulrich Kaiser, University of Zurich; link to Ulrich's website

- Jan Fülscher, Business Angels Schweiz und Kopfwerker AG; www.jan.fuelscher.ch

- Sylvain Santamarta, The Boston Consulting Group, Oslo;

Seminar format

This seminar consists of 14 class meetings plus one preparatory meeting at the beginning of the semester. There will be two introductory lectures by Professor Ulrich Kaiser which will introduce the concept of business plan writing. These introductory lectures will be followed by presentations by practitioners in the field, namely:

- Christoph Adrian

- Michael Hohn

- Marc Girardelli

- Jan Fülscher

- Sylvain Santamarta

- Heribert Reutimann and Adrian Sigrist, Uni Zurich/Bern technology transfer office

- Erika Puyal, ZKB

- N.N. (student entrepreneur), on his/her experience as a student entrepreneur

Number of participants - Application

This seminar is open to UZH students of business and economics. UZH students from other disciplines may attend the lectures and presentations as (non degree) guest students. The maximum number of teams is 15. Teams will be selected only on the basis of a one page motivational letter. Teams may consist of a maximum of five members. The motivational letter is to be written be the entire team, not by the individual student. Application deadline is September 17, 2009.

Course readings

Lecture notes

Prerequisites

BA in Business or Economics for degree students, BA in their respec-tive fields for non-degree students.

Complementary courses

Students seriously interested in starting their own business are encouraged to attend Ulrich Kaiser's course “A Primer in Entrepreneurship”, a BA-level course taught in the fall semester (link) and “Unternehmensgründung: Von der Idee zum Finanzierungsent-scheid“ offered by ISB (link)

Class meetings

Location: KOL-H-317

Grading

One-page business plan sketch with presentation and discussion in the middle of the semester (20 percent), full business plan with presentation and discussion (80 percent).

Dates

Fridays, 14:00-15:45, starting Sept. 18., last session before the business plan presentations: Dec. 12

ECTS

ECTS points: 6