This MOOC will give you the essential tools and knowledge to develop your entrepreneurial project dealing with gender gap and promoting gender equality. Women represent 52% of the total European population, but just a minority are start-up entrepreneurs. This makes female entrepreneurial potential an under-exploited source of economic growth and innovation. When establishing and running a business, women face particular challenges such as reconciling business and family duties and accessing finance, training, and business support networks.
These challenges discourage many women from pursuing entrepreneurship, especially in the ICT sector, where women are under-represented. Not only is there a growing gap across Europe between the demand and supply for ICT specialists, but women are overwhelmingly under-represented in this sector. When they choose ICT, they face a higher risk of dropping out because of unfavourable working conditions and lack of career progress.
This technology entrepreneurship MOOC, realized in the framework of WITECH Erasmus+ Project bringing together European academic institutions and business start-up hubs, can be offered in ICT MSc programs to diversify them and make them more attractive for women.
It aims to encourage female scientists, engineers, and technologists to develop businesses based on their expertise and everyone to create enterprises to help women enter the STEM sector.
Total workload of the course: 10 hours
This MOOC is provided by Politecnico di Milano, IPAG Business School, Lappeenranta University of Technology, PoliHub, The Digital Hub in collaboration with Technological University Dublin, The Shortcut.
The course is delivered in online mode and is available free of charge.
Course materials will remain available to all enrolled users after the end of the current edition, so they can return to content later. The current course edition will be followed by a new one just after its end.
Learning Schedule
The MOOC is structured in 3 weeks, that you can study successively or randomly as you prefer according to your own pace; they are in fact all related to the same topic areas but, at the same time, free-standing. Covering the different weeks, you will therefore progressively acquire tools and knowledge useful to develop your entrepreneurial project aimed to address Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) gender gap.
In Week 0, you will find a short introduction that gives you an overview of the main contents included in the MOOC. At the beginning of each week, a short intro will present you as well main topics and ILOs available in that specific week.
As you will see, the MOOC is organized in the following weeks:
Week 1 – Entrepreneurship and Management
Week 2 – Technology Entrepreneurship
Week 3 – Tech start-ups and hubs in technology entrepreneurial ecosystems
In particular, the first week, realised by IPAG Business School, includes on one side the experience presented by Sara, a young female entrepreneur, as a case in point to discover her start-up journey. In these videos, Sara explains the main ideas and issues she faces in developing her business idea and, taking steps from there, IPAG professors provide their suggestions and insights. On the other side, this week also includes more theoretical videos and additional resources (case studies, linkography, etc.), that allow to expand the content areas, presenting cutting-edge notions in digital economy, strategic management, concepts, and methods in entrepreneurship etc.
The second week, realised by LUT university, includes topics focused on technology entrepreneurship, such as basic and fundamental aspects of software development and e-market place, proof of concepts design and testing, typical pitfalls of start-up companies and so on.
The aim is to provide you with practical knowledge necessary to advance in your start up process and become an entrepreneur. This week also includes as testimonials the success stories of female students and women entrepreneurs in STEM sectors, sharing their knowledge, experiences, and suggestions to succeed in developing a business.
Moreover, at the end of the week, a learning scenario is proposed with the aim of stimulating your reflections and exchange with other participants to support you in taking home your very own idea for your start up company.
Lastly, week 3, realised by PoliHub, focuses on the role of incubators and tech hubs in the innovation ecosystem.In this context, on one side PoliHub shares its mission to support the creation and scaling-up of start-ups and on the other side the hubs, involved as testimonial, showcase how to provide facilities, services, and mentors in the initial and critical phases of the start-up’s life cycle. Taking steps from there, you will learn how to deal with uncertainties and how to consider innovation as a collaborative activity.
Intended Learning Outcomes
By actively participating in this MOOC, you will achieve different intended learning outcomes (ILOs).
Week 1
- Apply the different criteria of business self-readiness to oneself and soft skills to motivate people and establish good relationships with stakeholders.
- Apply the market segment identification rules to identify oneself's segment.
- Apply strategy analysis to develop oneself's business strategy.
Week 2
- Recall the main concepts of prototype-based design.
- Name success factors of real-world tech startups lead by women.
- Demonstrate understanding of the proof-of-concept prototyping and the context of product design.
- Compare your business case against real world examples of successful startups.
Week 3
- Express a clear value proposition.
- Define the competencies required to build a successful team to achieve project goals.
- Build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to validate the solution proposed.
- Create a marketing test campaign with customer segmentation and relative KPIs.
