Many people are attracted by the idea of starting or joining a new business mid-career. However, many are put off by the perceived risk, difficulty and uncertainty of entrepreneurship.

In this webinar, with Chris Coleridge (entrepreneurship professor at Cambridge Judge Business School and co-founder of Carbon13 venture accelerator), we look at entrepreneurship as a career option and consider three questions new entrepreneurs should try and answer about themselves:

1.    Do you understand your strengths and weaknesses?
As an early-stage entrepreneur you won’t have an employer brand behind you.  A laser-sharp focus on the skills you have (and lack) is vital.

2.    Can you learn and unlearn?
New entrepreneurs learn from day one. But this is the worst time to learn new skills from scratch.  You need partners who can cover everything you are not (really) good at yourself.  And you will need to unlearn some habits – like the desire to be right all the time. 

3.    Can you build a network around you?
As well as a new products/services, entrepreneurs are “stitching together” a new network.  The ability to create a hub for others to plug into is what distinguishes innovative businesses.  We will discuss how to design and build an ecosystem around your venture.

We will also examine critical practical issues like:

• What you should expect (in terms of time, workload, stress and financial risk)
• How to create experiments to test an idea (and a future for you)
• What research shows about the likelihood of success
• How to decide when to start and when to stop

Speaker

Chris Coleridge is Management Practice Associate Professor at Cambridge Judge Business School (teaching entrepreneurship and strategic management) and CEO of Carbon13, the venture builder for the climate emergency.  Chris was an entrepreneur in the 1990s, became an academic in entrepreneurship and strategy after exiting his business, and recently returned to the “practical” side of entrepreneurship by founding Carbon13.

Chris was formerly programme director of the MSc in Technology Entrepreneurship at UCL, and founded the Cambridge Judge Launchpad (now simply known as the Master of Studies in Entrepreneurship). He has an MBA from London Business School, an MSc in Organisational and Social Psychology from the London School of Economics and a PhD in Management, focused on business model innovation, also from the LSE.

Registration details

There are two links, listed below, the one on this page will link to the alumni link.

If you are an Imperial staff member, please click here to access.