Courses

• Identifying problems, needs, and opportunities through observation, dialogue, and simple research.
• Understanding customers and stakeholders: basic segmentation, profiles, and simple personas at a vocational level.
• Designing value propositions: how a product or service helps customers, solves problems, or creates benefits.
• Differentiation and positioning: how to stand out in a competitive or crowded environment, conceptually.
• Introduction to simple, structured approaches (e.g. canvases) for linking customers, problems, value, and solutions.

• Components of a basic business model: customers, value, channels, relationships, key activities, partners, and cost/revenue awareness.

Common revenue ideas at a conceptual level: product sales, subscriptions, service fees, licensing, and hybrid approaches.

• Basic financial awareness:
• Simple cost categories (fixed vs variable – awareness).
• Basic ideas of price, volume, and contribution (non-technical).
• Simple cashflow awareness and the importance of managing timing.

Considering scale and sustainability:

• what needs to be true for the venture to remain viable.
• Recognising when more detailed financial or legal expertise is required.

• Building an initial brand identity and story consistent with the value proposition.
• Basic marketing thinking: who are we serving, what are we offering, why does it matter, and how do we reach them?
• Awareness-level understanding of channels: digital, physical, partnership-based, and word-of-mouth.
• Designing simple customer journeys: discovering, evaluating, purchasing, and experiencing the product or service.
• Gathering feedback from early customers and using it to refine the offer and experience.

• Tools for creative problem-solving and idea generation (e.g. structured brainstorming, reframing problems – conceptual).
• Principles of lean experimentation at an awareness level: testing assumptions early with minimal risk and cost.
• Designing small-scale tests or pilots to learn quickly about what works and what does not.
• Basic implementation planning: key activities, responsibilities, simple timelines, and milestones for launching or improving a venture.
• Awareness of common risks (market, operational, team, financial) and simple approaches to risk identification and mitigation.

• Ethical entrepreneurship: honesty, respect for customers and partners, fairness, and responsibility towards society and environment at a conceptual level.
• Considering social and environmental impacts alongside commercial objectives (awareness of responsible innovation ideas).
• Building trust-based relationships with colleagues, customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders.
• Personal leadership: managing self, time, energy, and resilience, and dealing constructively with uncertainty and setbacks.
• Planning a personal development pathway as an entrepreneur or innovation professional, including networking and lifelong learning.