Registration

Description

PURPOSE OF THE WORKSHOP

The field of entrepreneurship is not short of myths and is often focused on special attributes of actors or on their actions. This workshop offers an alternative, more structural approach with a focus on providing the participants with a very concrete set of tools; ranging from effective models of reasoning to organizational models for devising and governing entrepreneurial projects.

OVERVIEW

This workshop covers topics such as: conceiving an entrepreneurial project, testing the business idea, combining resources and determining key choices about organizational and governance structures, managing the entrepreneurial project, etc... Using the latest research, this workshop provides a new perspective on setting up innovative entrepreneurial projects. Participants will acquire tools and strategies to successfully organize entrepreneurial projects - either by creating new startups, or by infusing entrepreneurial behaviors in well established firms.

BENEFITS TO PARTICIPANTS

Upon the completion of this workshop, the participants should be able to:

understand how to conceive, prepare and manage an entrepreneurial venture
properly structure and execute new entrepreneurial projects
understand the “science” behind entrepreneurship and use very specific tools, techniques and strategies for managing entrepreneurial ventures and innovation
acquire and use an effective decision-making framework allowing them to navigate through uncertainty
structure and implement entrepreneurial projects within larger organizations

WHO SHOULD ATTEND:

Executives working in innovation-oriented organizations or wishing to establish a business on their own.

CURRICULUM OUTLINE

First day: Crafting opportunities

The Economic Grounding of Opportunities

Opportunities can take various forms. Awareness of the existence of these forms helps in defining them. They all must be grounded in the economic structure through: the relations between demand and offer, costs and competition, or the type of outputs that input resources can generate.

Cognitive strategies

Is there any method for having new and good ideas? What’s behind good “intuition”?

Drawing on analyses of experiences of brilliant entrepreneurial opportunity definition, recent empirical studies on innovative problem- solving processes and a repertory of cognitive strategies is offered. These strategies are reconstructed using cases and simulations with the participants.

Relational strategies

How to shape one’s network of relationships in order to maximize the likelihood of defining a good, workable opportunity? Tools from social network analysis and design are presented along with cases of network management.

Second day: Entrepreneurial governance

Entrepreneurship is not mere innovation. It entails a set of specific governance structures and mechanisms for attracting, combining and dedicating resources for projects, and supporting their development. The second day will provide a repertory of those practices, and conditions for their effective implementation, relevant for structuring new firms as well as for infusing entrepreneurial behaviors in established firms. Those practices will be examined and discussed, using case studies and research results, as solutions to a number of specific dilemmas and key choices that are faced in constructing an entrepreneurial organization:

How to be born - lean or fat, local or global, single or partnered
How to manage human resources: Hiring or Partnering? Retention or Regeneration?
Why entrepreneurs work in teams and how to build entrepreneurial teams
Why entrepreneurship needs networked finance – types of investors and investment relations
Entrepreneurial ownership structures (in new and established firms)
Entrepreneurial organization forms: Leader-Centered, Incentive-Driven, or Communitarian/Democratic? Networked, Circular or Cellular?
To grow without up-sizing

FACULTY

ANNA GRANDORI is a full Professor of Business Organization at Bocconi University. She has been a visiting professor and invited speaker at many foreign universities, including: Copenhagen Business School; NYU; Ecole Polytechnique; CNRS, Paris; The Universities of Tilburg, Zurich, Groningen, Stanford and Chicago; Erasmus University; Norwegian School of Management and Harvard Business School. Anna Grandori has been Director of Research Center at Bocconi and of various international research programs; as well as editor of academic international journals in Organization and Management.

In her research and teaching she focuses on organizational economics and organization theory in an innovative perspective, addressing themes as innovative decision-making, knowledge governance, organizational networks and entrepreneurship. Prof. Grandori is one of the world’s foremost experts in organizational science and an author of the book called ”Organizing Entrepreneurship”. This book has been judged by some of the most authoritative experts in the field to be “a most distinguished contribution to the literature”, placing the study of entrepreneurship on a systematic basis.