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Sustainability Start-Up Seminar
Last Updated: 2026-02-05 16:23:40
Abstract
Participants are lead through a venturing process inspired by Lean and Design Thinking and social innovation methodologies. The course contains problem identification, idea generation and evaluation, team formation, and the development of one entrepreneurial idea per team. Starting points for entrepreneurial ideas are the climate crisis and biodiversity loss.
Objective
1. Students have experienced and know how to take the first steps towards co-creating a venture and potentially company 2. Students reflect deeply on sustainability issues (with a focus on climate change & biodiversity) and can formulate a problem statement 3. Students believe in their ability to bring change to the world with their own ideas 4. Students are able to apply entrepreneurial practices such as e.g. the lean startup approach 5. Students have built a first network and know how to proceed and who to approach in case they would like to take their ventures further.
Content
This course is aimed at people with a keen interest to address sustainability issues (with a focus on climate crisis and biodiversity loss) in collaborative and co-creative ways, with a curious mindset, and potentially first ideas for entrepreneurial action! The seminar consists of a mix of lectures, workshops, individual working sessions, teamwork, and student presentations/pitches. This class is taught by a reflective practitioner of entrepreneurial action for societal transformation. Real-world climate entrepreneurs and experts from the Swiss start-up and sustainability community will be invited to support individual sessions. All course content is based on latest international entrepreneurship practices and contains continuous processes of self- and world making. The seminar starts with an introduction to sustainability (with a special focus on climate change & biodiversity), social innovation and entrepreneurship. Students are asked to self-select into an area of their interest in which they will develop entrepreneurial ideas throughout the course. The first part of the course then focuses on deeply understanding sustainability problems within the area of interest. Through workshops and self-study, students will identify key design challenges, generate ideas, as well as provide systematic and constructive feedback to their peers. In the second part of the course, students will form teams around their generated ideas. In these teams they will develop a business model and, following the lean start-up process, conduct real-life testing, as well as pivoting of these business models. In the final part of the course, students present their insights gained from the lean start-up process, as well as pitch their entrepreneurial ideas and business models to an expert jury. The course will conclude with a session that provides students with a network and resources to further pursue their entrepreneurial journey.
Resources
Lecture Notes
All material used will be made available to the participants via moodle.
Literature
No pre-reading required.
General Information
- Language
- English
- Levels
- BSC , MSC
- Frequency
- Yearly recurring
Examination
- Type
- graded semester performance
Registration & Places
- Signup End
- 29.01.2023
Course Components
| Type | Title | Time & Place | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| lecture with exercise |
Sustainability Start-Up Seminar
Irregular lecture
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|
2 h weekly |
Offered In
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Management, Technology and Economics (Focus Coordinators: Prof. Bart Clarysse and Swantje Pless D-MTEC)
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Electives - new selection (These elctives can be chosen in autumn semester 2022 alreday.This structure will be the only one starting autumn semester 2023.)
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