• Identify and formulate a newly established venture’s challenges and possibilities.
• To reflect over the everyday life of an entrepreneur and a newly founded venture.
• To be able to take active part in a business planning and/or development process.
• To be able to critically debate and assess the material taught and combine these contributions into the analysis of SME’s.
• To be able to analyse and write/revise a business plan.
• Be able to present, in writing and orally, the result of the student’s analysis and reflection.

Undervisningssproget vil være dansk

Aim of the course

Entrepreneurship involves among other things the development of ideas and the creation of an organisation. Founders and initial teams often believe strategic planning or development beyond the initial paper work is time wasted. It rather happens as they go along. Most start-ups do not even have written statements on their business idea. Nor any records on what makes the idea viable/unique and the venture’s main goals and how these will be achieved. Often such reflections only emerge when the need to seek funding outside closest family and friends surface. Arguably action indeed is more important than strategy for a newly founded firm. However, the ability to put the emerging business under a strategic lens and thereby

be able to present the venture in a convincing manner plays a crucial role in obtaining both early and late stage funding as well as being re-funded. The overall aim of this course is to address these problems by introduce the students to the life-world of entrepreneurs and their newly established ventures and providing insight as to the advantages and disadvantages of business planning and business plans. The aim is to equip students with practical and theoretical tools to develop skills in conducting indepth

analysis of new ventures or business ideas and to develop well-founded, reliable and sensible business plans.
 

Content

The entrepreneur himself/herself or the start-up is the point of departure of the course. The course consists of two integrated parts: one practical and one theoretical. The practical part of the course is introduced to the students about 5 weeks before the actual start, where the students are asked to form groups of three, and then make contact and sign a contract with a newly founded SME. Their field work/project consist of two main parts: 1) repeated interviews with the entrepreneur about her/himself and the start-up; 2) To take active part in a development or planning process in the SME and, as a result, either write a business plan or analyse and revise

an existing business plan. The theoretical part corresponds to this set-up by, firstly, lectures around normative theory on what entrepreneurship, enterprising, business planning and business development is. Typically, each lecture corresponds to a section in a traditional business plan. Secondly, a set of lectures will introduce ‘story telling’ as a practical tool for writing business plans as well as understanding entrepreneurs and their ventures. These lectures are based on interpretative approaches to entrepreneurship research (for example narrative and discursive

approaches) and will problematise and further develop the understanding on what entrepreneurship is; who is an entrepreneur; what entrepreneurs do and moreover how they are portrayed. During the lectures we will make use of business cases; business plans; annual reports and the students partnering with SME’s to capture and understand the interplay of business planning and storytelling in practice.
 

Progression

This course is the foundation for understanding the fundamentals of strategic conduct and action among newly established organization. It will utilize the principles of business economics, organizational analysis, micro- and business economics from the 1 st semester. The course also provides insight, which is elementary and central in later courses like Entrepreneurship II, Entrepreneurial Finance, and the Entrepreneurial and

innovative organization.

• Hjorth, Daniel, Steyaert, Chris (red.).Narrative and discursive approaches in entrepreneurship: A second movements in entrepreneurship book. Cheltenham Northampton/Edward Elgar, 2004, 318 pages.
• Sahlman, W. (1997), “How to Write a Great Business Plan”, Harvard Business Review, July-August 1997, pp. 98-108.
• Wickham, P.A. (2006/Fourth edition) Strategic entrepreneurship.
  Harlow/Financial Times Prentice Hall: 650 pages.
• Practical guide ’how to write a successful business plan’ (for example
  McKinsey & Company’s).