Primary objective: Understand how technological innovations transform current markets and create new markets through digitally powered start-up.
Secondary objectives:
1. Develop a basic understanding of contemporary and emerging "deep technologies",
2. Explore new technologies in the context of digital markets and digital business models,
3. Apply the acquired knowledge to a business idea.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE INFORMATION ABOUT THE TEACHING AND ASSESSMENT METHOD(S) USED IN THIS COURSE IS WITH RESERVATION. A RE-EMERGENCE OF THE CORONAVIRUS AND NEW COUNTERMEASURES BY THE DUTCH GOVERNMENT MIGHT FORCE COORDINATORS TO CHANGE THE TEACHING AND ASSESSMENT METHODS USED. THE MOST UP-TO-DATE INFORMATION ABOUT THE TEACHING/ASSESSMENT METHOD(S) WILL BE AVAILABLE IN THE COURSE SYLLABUS.

The advent of new and powerful digital technologies, platforms and infrastructures has significantly transformed innovation and entrepreneurship. Digital technologies not only open up new opportunities for innovators and entrepreneurs but also have a broader impact on value creation and capture. More recently, technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Blockchain, and Quantum Computing are rapidly changing markets, and they promise to remain a core part of novel start-ups for some time to come. Learning the skills necessary to emerge in such new technologies and place them in an entrepreneurial context will be useful.

This course focuses on four contemporary technologies: Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Blockchain, and Quantum Computing. You will receive a hands-on introduction to these technologies, consider business implications, and transform them into digital business ideas. In a problem-based learning environment, you quickly learn about a technology of your choice and strengthen your ability to develop an entrepreneurial strategy. You will develop a business model, analyse technical feasibilities and the innovation hub with which you plan to engage, identify a target market and customers, , and define a path to commercialisation that ultimately delivers value considering potential societal issues.

Through a mix of entrepreneurship and innovation literature, business insights, case studies, and a team project, your learning journey will focus on the reality of today's and tomorrow’s key technologies and how they can be used to support your path to digital entrepreneurship.

The course does not require any particular technological background. An important assessment of the course is a group project in which you develop a plan how a new technology can be used for a novel start-up, supplemented by an individual essay.