The “Tech Entrepreneurship Business Intensive Course” was held at Voronezh State University between 26 and 28 April as part of the federal project “Platforms of University Technological Entrepreneurship”. These trainings are aimed at unlocking the entrepreneurship potential and training of professionals in the field of technological entrepreneurship. Participants of the training obtained new knowledge and had an opportunity to identify their competencies and find out the potentials for the development of business projects.
“Such events are highly important for students as they help them to study the whole process of creating a project, from an idea to its implementation, in the form of a game. They also learn to pitch their projects to investors. They structure their presentations taking into account the needs of their future clients and they learn to find strong points of their idea,” said Tatiana Kuleshova, a certified business coach from “Corporation MSP”, tracker, regional expert of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives, and expert of SMARTEKA.
The participants learnt how to identify the opportunities presented by technologies for creating a successful technological startup and how to evaluate and use them efficiently. According to the expert, there are several large areas in the field of technological entrepreneurship: Internet of Things — Smart Home, Pilotless Aircraft, and VR/AR. Students noted that during the training they not only studied the theory but managed to apply their knowledge in practice while developing their own product.
As a result, the teams prepared efficient business models of their future projects in different areas and also learnt how to successfully pitch their project to stakeholders. The participants with the best projects were awarded with books on entrepreneurship: “The Mom Test: How to Talk to Customers & Learn If Your Business Is a Good Idea When Everyone Is Lying to You” by Rob Fitzpatrick, “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries, and “Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers” by Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur.
