Module 7 was a week-long course in Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship taught by Professor Packalen. It's hard to pin down exactly what this course was about, but it covered topics about personal characteristics of entrepreneurs, how to manage and grow a business, and how to obtain funding for a new venture.
Again, there was a serious burnout factor left over from the previous module and motivation was really low. Regardless, I found a couple of points in the class interesting. One was a simulated negotiation of a new venture with a couple of Venture Capital companies. Instead of participating in the exercise, my team was split up to observe the negotiations of the rest of the class. Each negotiation session had three teams, one as the new venture, one as an existing VC already invested in the company, and the third as a new aggressive VC wanting to invest. The dynamics of the negotiation was really interesting to observe and some people really got into their roles. One thing that really stood out to me was how quickly the negotiators started talking about pushing the founders of the company (they weren't present at the negotiation).
Another interesting exercise involved a pitch from an actual entrepreneur trying to get his business going. We had to develop our own framework for evaluating a business idea and use it. I guess it was an exam of sorts. We had two hours to apply our framework and decide if we would invest in the business. The actual business idea was really cool. The company is called Ocorant and they're trying to develop a next generation heart monitor. I can't say much about what was pitched to us, but you can read about it here. My hand was sore after two hours of writing, but I think I did well...my framework was pretty involved.
The course actually made me think of working with Venture Capital companies. I'll have to think about that career tack a little more and explore it.
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