In the Build Your Startup course you will do customer-centred innovation. We will introduce you to methods and tools associated with the lean start-up and design-thinking philosophy. This will help you to validate if the problem/opportunity you’re addressing is real and if there is enough demand for your idea before you spend a fortune of time and money to build it into a start-up. You will continuously go ‘out of the building’ to talk to your potential customers, observe them, learn who they are and what they need. Your knowledge will be used to continuously improve the concept of your product, you might even have to change the target customer until you find a good problem-solution fit. You will assess the potential of your start-up by sizing the market, analyse key competitors and relevant trends. Through experiments you will also have to figure out how much and in what way you will get paid for the value you are about to create for your customers (revenue model), so that your solutions can make even more of an impact in the future!

Idea to Startup is a set of master courses where you can practice entrepreneurship in one of the four focus areas.

In these set of courses, you do not study entrepreneurship, you become an entrepreneur. Working in a team, you identify a business opportunity using computer sciences. Applications can range from mobility, cyber security to predictive maintenance etc. You will test its validity, and build a viable business model – a roadmap from an idea to a sustainable innovation-driven company. On this journey, you will be helped by guest lecturers from industry and the startup ecosystem. After this course, you will be able to proactively assess the merit of a technology startup, whether you want to build one or join one. The set includes the following 4 courses:

• TPM411 – IT & AI and ET4247  – High Tech Startups – Offered in quarter 2 and 3

You will focus on information and computing technologies (e.g AI, big data, blockchain) that are transforming traditional industries and societies at large.

• TPM412 – Idea to Startup – Health & Life Sciences – Offered in quarter 2 and 4

Business ideas are based on life science and biomedical technologies and sourced from challenges in the well-being and health care industry. 

• TPM413 – Idea to Startup – Energy & Sustainability – Offered in quarter 1 and 3

The ideas focus on ensuring a sustainable and energy efficient environment (topics may include circular economy, renewables, CleanTech, agriculture, and water and waste management).

• TPM414 – Idea to Startup – Deep Tech – Offered in quarter 1

The ideas must be based on substantial scientific advances and cutting-edge engineering that can be used to build competitive advantage in the market, via patenting for example.

Turning Technology into Business (TTiB) aims to equip you with a strong conceptual foundation to understand the dynamic process of technology-based entrepreneurship. Students learn how business strategies are best formulated and how (through entrepreneurship) technology can create value. TTiB consists of seven lectures, introducing the theoretical backgrounds of technological, market and business analyses. A unique aspect of TTiB is that existing technologies (developed within and patented by the TU Delft) are used as case subjects. The patent project is the focal point of the curriculum.