Learning from and inspired by the experience of high profile individuals who have made their own mark in the world, participants will gain a profound and deeply personal understanding of how to identify, cultivate and act on their passions. We will engage Changemakers globally within a broadly defined theme.

Teacher: Risto Vuorio
Noppa: Changemakers
Schedule: Periods I-II

Gain an understanding of the entrepreneurial process and to apply these insights into the assessment of an entrepreneurial opportunity.

Teacher: Peter Kelly
Noppa: New Venture Development I

Goal of this introduction course is to create initial understanding on the value creation of an information technology based firm and how to analyze in practice factors affecting the success of a venture based on business models and growth & go-to-market strategies.

Students learn basic characteristics of the local and the global IT industry, importance of new and growing businesses to national economies, how to recognize and classify different business models and how to analyze the factors affecting the success of a venture based on business models and strategies. Course assignments are done in small entrepreneurial groups and consist of business model analysis, development and brainstorming for real high technology startup firms.

Teacher: Olli-Pekka Mutanen
Noppa: Introduction to Technology Business and Venturing
Schedule: Periods I-II / 2013 - 2014

Gain an understanding of where and how to raise entrepreneurial finance.

Teacher: Peter Kelly
Noppa: Entrepreneurial Finance

The entrepreneurial mindset includes taking initiative, searching continuously for new opportunities and pursuing them, taking risk and responsibility, learning from failures and using them to ultimate success and strategic achievement. As entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled, for many growth-oriented entrepreneurs, the most pressing questions are about getting the right people engaged in our business idea, developing implementation capacity networks through partnerships that often are global, growing without losing a start-up culture, and thus, building a high-growth, long-term, sustainable firm from scratch. This course will address these issues and will provide you with a number of critical concepts and competencies that will be useful to you in both the short and long term. Throughout the course there will be a dual emphasis on thinking systematically and strategically about aspects of a rapidly growing organization, and on the actual implementation challenges associated with human resource management and leadership.

"Very good course. One of the courses that applies real life situations by learning from real people and their endeavors."
feedback from students

Teacher: Aino Tenhiälä
Noppa: Entrepreneurial Leadership

The course will cover the core areas of entrepreneurial marketing such as analyzing the market environment and identifying opportunities, assessing promotional possibilities, building partnerships and networks as well as conducting entrepreneurial market research. These issues are discussed especially from the perspective of young growth-oriented firms.

Teacher: Jukka Partanen
Noppa: Entrepreneurial Marketing

The essence of entrepreneurship is designing solutions to problems and challenges with offerings and experiences that not only address the underlying need but do so with a WOW factor! The stunning success of companies like Apple are in no small measure due to the power of design thinking through relentless focus on introducing elegant, yet seemingly simple, solutions for customers. The legacy of Steve Jobs lies in embracing the power of intuitive thinking, something that is second nature to the world of design. The principle aim of the course is to expose and sensitize participants to discover the power of "design thinking". To many, design thinking is invoked when a product or experience offering needs to "look right" or "feel right". In this course, I want you to embrace design thinking as an approach that any successful entrepreneur should employ - a highly intuitive, customer obsessed, deep dive perspective on solving problems or challenges in compelling and meaningful ways. To be clear, the principle aim is not to train people to be designers, rather, to embrace the power of design thinking as a catalyst for innovation.

Teacher: Peter Kelly
Noppa: Design and Innovation in Context

The principal objective of this course is to give students a general but thorough understanding of the area of innovation selling and sales management for both professional and academic purposes. This includes developing an interest in the area of sales, understanding the dynamics and challenges in organizing sales work and the ability to analytically evaluate and solve sales-related issues. The focus is on innovative and transformative selling, selling under modern new business models, selling in corporate venturing and startup selling. You will learn to apply your knowledge to a number of industries, but the emphasis is on business-to-business contexts. One of the primary goals is to raise the appreciation of the topic and area of sales among students, and create a positive outlook on doing sales for a living.

Teacher: Petri Parviainen
Noppa: Managing Innovative Sales

In this course students will be introduced to frameworks to understand the dynamic challenges businesses face as they strive for continued growth and renewal. We will address issues of stimulating, financing and controlling growth in young firms. We will further cover issues of maintaining growth and seeking renewal in older, established corporations.

Teacher: Jens Schmidt
Noppa: Strategies for Growth and Renewal

The main objective is to provide a holistic picture of what entrepreneurs and managers of high technology firms need to consider at their work. You learn to analyze businesses, gain key insights from case studies of real contemporary firms, and compare different approaches to the management of a venture.

Teacher: Olli-Pekka Mutanen
Noppa: Management of a Technology Venture

This course focuses on go-to market planning for growth-oriented technology SMEs in various stages of internationalization process.

The course consists of six (6) expert lectures on central topics related to the growth and internationalization challenges and processes and the final seminar session. Course assignment is to be done in small groups related to analysis and development of sales and marketing, product and/or service offering, and go-to-market plans for real growth-oriented technology SMEs . Each group present the results of their course work to other students, course personnel as well as company representatives in person. In addition to own presentations, each group gives feedback to other groups in the form of peer evaluations.

Teacher: Olli-Pekka Mutanen
Noppa: Growth and Internationalization of Technology SMEs

Gain an understanding of the entrepreneurial process and to apply these insights into the assessment of an entrepreneurial opportunity.

Teacher: Peter Kelly
Noppa:a href="https://noppa.aalto.fi/noppa/kurssi/25e44000/esite">Venture Formation

The temptation for many aspiring entrepreneurs is to start writing “the business plan” immediately. This effort is both misplaced and an inefficient use of your most valuable resource, time. While an idea might have promising commercial potential at first sight, upon further investigation you will find that most ideas are not easily translated or transformed into an entrepreneurial business opportunity.

Teacher: Peter Kelly
Noppa: New Venture Development II

The students work in cross cultural teams of 4 to 10 members for up to 6 months. Each team is carrying out a particular strategic digital service project related to digital service business development from multidisciplinary perspective. The projects are based on industry or research cases with real customers.

Teacher: Mika Helenius
Noppa: Digital Service Insight and Innovation I

Aalto Service Camp is an Aalto-wide, cross-disciplinary service innovation course. Students work in groups of 4-6 students, each group having members from all three schools of Aalto. A group innovates a new service, through all the steps from initial idea to implemented service. The core of the course consists of intensive periods such as concept camp, design camp, implementation camp, and experimentation camp. Since services embody variety of practices, systems and models, their successful creation depends on balanced combination of design, technology and business perspectives. The contribution of different disciplines makes all stages more creative, and the students learn and benefit of the viewpoints of other disciplines.

Teacher: Håkan Mitts
Noppa: Aalto Service Camp

The course provides concrete and pragmatic approach to entrepreneurship in technology or service based business.

The course is targeted to students who are interested in technology based entrepreneurship. It includes lectures by experienced entrepreneurs and domain experts, case studies and business related projects dealing with high technology based ventures. The course is arranged as a seminar series where each session is about one central topic including one to two case lectures and discussion part. In the seminar study students will familiarize themselves with and analyze a software-intensive venture and present their findings to other students in the final seminar session. Alternatively, students can plan and test a business concept for an existing or a new company, and report the related result

Teacher: Olli-Pekka Mutanen
Noppa: Technology Entrepreneurship Seminar

After the completion of the course the student: - understands the quality of his or her own design, engineering, or marketing skills - understands the potential and the challenges of interdisciplinary teamwork - is able to carry out PD tasks by using both traditional and modern methods and tools - understands PD costs and economy - is able to deliver high quality oral and written reports - is prepared for negotiation situations, and to deal with agreements, NDA's and IPR's

Teacher: Kalevi Ekman
Noppa: Product Development Project

During one academic year, the course teaches students how to use the Stanford/IDEO design process in product development, and is concentrated in practice-based learning. The global student teams prototype, test and iterate in order to develop and implement innovative solutions to real world design challenges posed by multinational corporate sponsors. The final proof-of-concept prototypes are typically featured at the Stanford Design EXPE each June in California.

Teacher:
Noppa: Global Team-based Design Innovation