MMM123: New Venture Start-Up

Module code: MMM123

Module provider: Leadership, Organisations and Behaviour; Henley Business School

Credits: 20

Level: Postgraduate Masters

When you'll be taught: Semester 2

Module convenor: Mr Keith Heron, email: keith.heron@henley.reading.ac.uk

Pre-requisite module(s):

Co-requisite module(s):

Pre-requisite or Co-requisite module(s):

Module(s) excluded:

Placement information: NA

Academic year: 2024/5

Available to visiting students: Yes

Talis reading list: Yes

Last updated: 27 June 2024

Overview

Module aims and purpose

This module provides students with a simulation of starting up a real business venture within a virtual incubator setting. New venture start-up involves more than generating a creative idea…it involves spotting a problem and generating a creative solution and then actually starting-up or taking action. 

This module provides 3 test opportunities for students to sense check their business thinking as evolving value proposition versions.

Students will experience peer-to-peer tests, a conventional explanation in a report, and then a final crowdfund test all of which provide important feedback for refining and enhancing the pre-launch Value Proposition. 

Actual start-up does not occur in this module but confidence for start-up is established. 

Module learning outcomes

This module has been selected for providing evidence for the Assurance of Learning process for Henley Business School.

1. By the end of the module, it is expected that students will be able to:
2. Business Knowledge-LO4: demonstrate original creative thinking through synthesis of different academic and practical knowledge (QAA-Level 7);
3. demonstrate the application of theory which is used to form the idea and its purpose for an intended customer into a testable Value Proposition and its feasibility checking using the Business Model Canvas;  
4. demonstrate creativity and risk taking in developing and testing business hypotheses in 2 public tests;
5. Have interacted with students of different nationalities and exchanged and learned from cultural and market intelligence.

Module content

• Frameworks for organising Entrepreneurship;
• Exploring sources of opportunity and personal alertness;
• Analysing situations that produce problems for particular customer groups;
• Creativity and idea generation in response to the problem;
• Marketing communication and selling;
• Feasibility checking with business model analysis;
• Storyboarding the communication for the crowdfund video;
• Crowdfunding as a source of customer interest and distributed funding. 

Structure

Teaching and learning methods

This course is highly interactive and reliant upon personal initiative and action taking. Lecture classes are not traditional lectures as they are comprised of a combination of mini-lectures and interactive group work.  

The introductory 2 autumn classes provide the theoretical information and resources to help in the discovery of the problem/opportunity and the incubation of your initial idea to solve the problem with a ‘value proposition’, which is to be presented in Task 1 as your individual business hypotheses- or version 1 Value Proposition. 

Students are required to be proactive in risking their personal credibility by presenting their VP hypothesis in its evolving forms; first to their peers for informal peer feedback, then in a report to the tutor and then to the entire cohort in a crowdfund campaign.

Study hours

At least 24 hours of scheduled teaching and learning activities will be delivered in person, with the remaining hours for scheduled and self-scheduled teaching and learning activities delivered either in person or online. You will receive further details about how these hours will be delivered before the start of the module.

Please note the independent study hours above are notional numbers of hours; each student will approach studying in different ways. We would advise you to reflect on your learning and the number of hours you are allocating to these tasks.

Semester 1 The hours in this column may include hours during the Christmas holiday period.

Semester 2 The hours in this column may include hours during the Easter holiday period.

Summer The hours in this column will take place during the summer holidays and may be at the start and/or end of the module.

Assessment

Requirements for a pass

Students need to achieve an overall module mark of 50% to pass this module.

Summative assessment

Penalties for late submission of summative assessment

The Support Centres will apply the following penalties for work submitted late:

Assessments with numerical marks

• where the piece of work is submitted after the original deadline (or any formally agreed extension to the deadline): 10% of the total marks available for that piece of work will be deducted from the mark for each working day (or part thereof) following the deadline up to a total of three working days;
• the mark awarded due to the imposition of the penalty shall not fall below the threshold pass mark, namely 40% in the case of modules at Levels 4-6 (i.e. undergraduate modules for Parts 1-3) and 50% in the case of Level 7 modules offered as part of an Integrated Masters or taught postgraduate degree programme;
• where the piece of work is awarded a mark below the threshold pass mark prior to any penalty being imposed, and is submitted up to three working days after the original deadline (or any formally agreed extension to the deadline), no penalty shall be imposed;
• where the piece of work is submitted more than three working days after the original deadline (or any formally agreed extension to the deadline): a mark of zero will be recorded.

Assessments marked Pass/Fail

• where the piece of work is submitted within three working days of the deadline (or any formally agreed extension of the deadline): no penalty will be applied;
• where the piece of work is submitted more than three working days after the original deadline (or any formally agreed extension of the deadline): a grade of Fail will be awarded.

The University policy statement on penalties for late submission can be found at: https://www.reading.ac.uk/cqsd/-/media/project/functions/cqsd/documents/qap/penaltiesforlatesubmission.pdf

You are strongly advised to ensure that coursework is submitted by the relevant deadline. You should note that it is advisable to submit work in an unfinished state rather than to fail to submit any work.

Formative assessment

Formative assessment is any task or activity which creates feedback (or feedforward) for you about your learning, but which does not contribute towards your overall module mark.

Reassessment

Additional costs