Your journey to entrepreneurship begins here
Behind every new product is a great idea. But not all great ideas translate into successful products or services. An entrepreneur needs to possess a special mix of creative mindset, business acumen, and an innovative approach to turn the spark of an idea into a marketable proposition that investors or a corporate will want to back. The Entrepreneurial Journey helps you to develop this essential blend of skills.
The journey is suitable for both those wanting to start their own venture or innovate as intrapreneurs from within an organisation – the basic process is the same. Building on your core teaching in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship module, you will develop a value proposition, carry out customer discovery research, validate the product or service, and create a fully-fledged business proposal. At the end of your six-month project journey, you will pitch to a panel of investors, and compete for a monetary prize.
Ranked #5 in the world for entrepreneurship in the FT’s Global MBA rankings, Imperial is a compelling place for this project. Whether you are an aspiring entrepreneur or intrapreneur or want to find out whether the entrepreneurial life is for you, the Entrepreneurial Journey is a safe space to explore an actual business opportunity in a practical environment.
Collaborating for success
You will form a team with your MBA classmates. A key feature of the Entrepreneurial Journey is that in addition you can team up with tech students or post-docs from around the College, design students from the Royal College of Art or Imperial academic entrepreneurs via the Imperial Enterprise division. Operating as part of a self-selected, multi-disciplinary team, you can explore the commercial feasibility of ideas based on the latest developments in science, technology, medicine and design.
A great opportunity to practice your teamwork skills, this project will build on the complementary skillsets in your team and allow you to both deploy and develop your areas of expertise. There will be plenty of support available for your project, including “Pitch & mix” events (helping you to form as a team), a lean innovation workshop, idea surgeries, coaching sessions with your entrepreneurship professor, and a practice pitch event.
The Journey is provided by the Business School in close collaboration with the Imperial Enterprise Lab, Imperial’s entity established to support entrepreneurial projects by all of its students and early alumni.
Pitching to the experts
The project culminates with a live pitch of your business case to an expert panel of venture capitalists to compete for a monetary prize. By the end of this highly experiential journey, you will have explored the process of preparing a startup and will be able to exploit the power of design and innovation to transform ideas into a new product or service.
Imperial’s entrepreneurial ecosystem
If your completed project presents a realistic investment, you can compete for taking part in the Imperial Summer Accelerator, a programme designed to help you progress towards market readiness. You can also get mentored by the Imperial Venture Mentoring Service which has a panel of 70+ experienced, successful entrepreneurs and business executives – many of them Imperial alumni. Further, Imperial has an innovation fund that backs early start-ups from within the Imperial ecosystem. You may also want to explore the incubator on Imperial’s brand-now White City campus which is becoming our focal point for all innovation and entrepreneurship activities.
"If you are looking to start a business or want to expand on an existing idea, Imperial has a wide range of excellent resources to help you with entrepreneurship. From a talented network of staff that work at the Imperial Enterprise Lab, to excellent startup events, there is a lot to get your teeth stuck into."
