Prerequisites

None

Learning Outcomes and Assessment

This course aims to introduce students to the factors at play in innovation and entrepreneurship in the process of converting physics based research into products and services that can have significant impact on society. The module is taught using an adaptation of the Challenge Based Learning pedagogy, where students are in charge of iteratively homing in to a specific challenge to work on during their Innovation Development Group Project, starting with a relatively diffuse idea in the beginning. By the end of the course, students will learn to identify and analyse innovation opportunities, understand the competitive landscape and develop a business pitch based on one of their chosen innovation opportunities. Team work will be central to the course – students will work in assigned teams for a number of in-class exercises and will build their own teams for the group projects.

Synopsis

The topics covered in the lectures include:

Innovation Opportunities – Radical and Incremental Innovation; Factors that can assist in identification of innovation opportunities

Generating Innovation Opportunity ideas – Brainstorming, Lateral Thinking, Problem Framing, Technology Maturity, Customer Focussed Innovation

Defining Innovation Opportunities – Identifying key figures of merit; developing S.M.A.R.T. Problem Statements; Examples from recent Physics based startups

Developing a Business Proposition – Understanding Market Landscape; Market size estimation; Market validation techniques – Lean Startup, Pretotyping; Technology validation; Intellectual Property

Managing Innovation – Innovation Funnel; Technology Readiness Levels; Traditional project management vs lean startup; Google X case study – prioritising harder vs easier tasks, kill-metrics; impact of cashflow on managing innovation

Financing Innovation – Fixed and Variable costs; Financial Statements; Pricing; Types of financing available for early stage innovation

Innovation and Sustainability - Life Cycle Assessment of technological materilas and products; Jevon's Paradox

People – Communication, Building effective teams, challenges in managing creative people, Persuasion and Negotiation, Ethics in Innovation

Pitch Decks, Business Plans and Fundraising - Key contents of a Business Plan; Venture Capital Financing - Due Diligence process; Deal Terms - Valuation/Dilution, Liquidation Preference, Founder Vesting; other avenues for early stage financing

The lectures, and the discussions and other interactive elements within them, are intended to assist students with the group project, rather than for performing the more common function of imparting knowledge that is valuable in itself.

There are four elements of assessment in this module:

1. Innovation opportunities Assignment - 25%
2. Competitive Landscape report on a topic linked to the innovation development group project – 25%
3. Innovation Development Group Project - Presentation and Q&A - 40%
4. Final reflective note – 10%

As the assessment style is different from what students attending this module might be familiar with, the course leader will make slots available for students to discuss choices of topics and draft submissions.

All assignments within this module contribute in different ways to the main Innovation Development Group Project. Recent innovation development project topics have included:

• Muon Tomography for Disaster Response
• Hyperspectral Drone Imaging for Rice Disease Detection
• EasyFlo - A wearable, user-friendly blood flow sensor using flexible electronics and Near Field Communication
• Château Lavoisier – Sustainable fine wine using spectroscopy

References

Short required readings will need to be completed before specific sessions. A sample is below:

1. Institute of Physics Business Startup Awards and Lee Lucas Awards citation booklets for the previous three years (eg. 2019, 2020and 2021)
2. FogHorn Project - Why Alphabet’s Moonshot Factory Killed Off A Brilliant Carbon-Neutral Fuel – FastCompany, 2016
3. Eisaman, Matthew D., et al. "Indirect ocean capture of atmospheric CO₂: Part II. Understanding the cost of negative emissions." International journal of greenhouse gas control 70 (2018): 254-261
4. A123 Systems presentation at NASA Workshop 2007 
5. Powell, D. Pioneering battery maker files for bankruptcy. Nature (2012)
6. Guide to term sheets from Startup Valuation School 

Those who are interested in consulting a textbook are recommended to use the following:

1. Byers, T.H., Dorf, R.C. and Nelson, A. J. and (2019). Technology ventures: from idea to enterprise. 5^th McGraw-Hill ISBN: 9781259875991
2. Iannuzzi, D. (2017). Entrepreneurship for Physicists: A Practical Guide to Move Inventions from University to Market. Morgan & Claypool Publishers.

Additional reading recommendations will be provided with most topics. A sample is below:

1. Drucker, P. F. (2002). The discipline of innovation. Harvard business review, 80(8), 95-102
2. Christensen, C. M., Hall, T., Dillon, K., & Duncan, D. S. (2016). Know your customers’ jobs to be done. Harvard business review, 94(9), 54-62.
3. De Bono, E. (2010). Lateral thinking: a textbook of creativity. Penguin UK.
4. Wedell-Wedellsborg, T. (2017). Are you solving the right problems? Harvard Business Review, 95(1), 76-83.
5. Trippe, A., WIPO, Guidelines for Preparing Patent Landscape Reports.
6. Park, H., Kim, K., Choi, S., & Yoon, J. (2013). A patent intelligence system for strategic technology planning. Expert Systems with Applications, 40(7), 2373-2390.
7. Sinfield, J., & Solis, F. (2016). Finding a lower-risk path to high-impact innovations. MIT Sloan management review, 57(4), 79.
8. Project Aristotle - re:Work – Google
9. The Y-Combinator Series A Term Sheet background and Term Sheet Template
10. Raworth, K. (2017). A Doughnut for the Anthropocene: humanity's compass in the 21st century. The lancet planetary health, 1(2), e48-e49
11. Giampietro, M., & Mayumi, K. (2018). Unraveling the complexity of the Jevons Paradox: The link between innovation, efficiency, and sustainability. Frontiers in Energy Research, 6, 26.
12. Godelnik, R., van der Meer, J. (2019). Sustainable Business Models in an Entrepreneurial Environment. In: Aagaard, A. (eds) Sustainable Business Models. Palgrave Studies in Sustainable Business https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93275-0_9