Bachelor's Practical Group Work for Value Creation A

Academic unit or major

Entrepreneurship courses

Instructor(s)

Keisuke Yamada / Yuri Matsuzaki / Mayu Watanabe

Class Format

Exercise (Face-to-face)

Media-enhanced courses

-

Day of week/Period
(Classrooms)

Intensive

Class

-

Course Code

ENT.V205

Number of credits

020

Course offered

2025

Offered quarter

1-2Q

Syllabus updated

Mar 19, 2025

Language

Japanese

※ Courses with parentheses in the course number have different subject codes depending on the student's year of admission.

Syllabus

Course overview and goals

In this course, a two-month team project called the Lean Launchpad program (LLP) has been offered in order to demonstrate students’ own entrepreneurship and practice "developing new value and excecuting it in society" This program is positioned at the "social implementation stage" of the three stages of entrepreneurship education: "motivation and awareness building stage," "competency formation stage," and "social implementation stage."

＜Lean Launchpad Program (LLP)＞
Based on ideas about new products or services generated and proposed by a student, he/she will form a team with other members who agree with the idea, conduct repeated interviews with potential customers, and discover customers with a "serious need" for the new product or service by a team. At the same time, they will verify the marketability of the idea by estimating the price of the new product or service to be offered, the timing of market establishment, and the development plan and costs for the new product or service. Ultimately, the goal is to create a business plan that can withstand the evaluation of investors. Through these tasks, students will gain a practical understanding of the basic actions and knowledge that must be considered in order to "develop new value and execute it into society". As this program puts into practice the foundation of business, which is "clarifying customers(users)" it is an ideal program for those who plan to enter the business world in the future, including "starting a company".
Detailed information about the program and schedule will be announced at the beginning of the term. Please be sure to attend the pre-registration briefing and refer to the Total website (https://www.total.titech.ac.jp/).

To complete this program, an expert (Takashi Tsutsumi, CEO of Startup Brain Co., Ltd.) who is familiar with the program and has extensive experience in developing startups has been invited as a guest lecturer to guide the student teams.

To complete the program, students will be required to comprehensively demonstrate the elements of "leadership" and "entrepreneurship," such as sharing a vision and purpose, empathy, issue identification, proposing solutions (ideas), prototyping, user testing, verifying hypotheses, communicating with customers, collaborators, and team staff, and taking actions.

Course description and aims

(1) By putting into practice what one considers to be "leadership" and "entrepreneurship," one will be able to recognize the level of one's own thinking and abilities. In particular, the following abilities will be confirmed and acquired:
i. One can propose practical ideas to solve social issues by utilizing one's own expertise.
ii. One can explain one's ideas appropriately and build consensus within a team while respecting the opinions of others.
iii. One can appropriately improve proposals based on feedback from society.
iv. One can complete group work as a project.
(2) One can experience the most important thing to consider when creating a new business: (a) one's own new ideas, proposals, and developments, and (b) the ability to provide a persuasive explanation of the customers and markets while maintaining plausibility, which will contribute to an understanding of the principles of "business," including "starting a business" as a future option.

Student learning outcomes

実務経験と講義内容との関連 (又は実践的教育内容)

Each element of entrepreneurship is directly relevant to the workplace. In addition, students will be able to practice and understand through their own work in teamwork workshops.

Keywords

Entrepreneurship, Consensus Building, Issues Identification, Social Issues, Leadership/Followership, Business Creation

Competencies

• Specialist skills
• Intercultural skills
• Communication skills
• Critical thinking skills
• Practical and/or problem-solving skills

Class flow

(1) Applicants who wish to enroll in this course should be sure to read the course information materials for "Bachelor’s Practical Group Work for Value Creation A" carefully at the beginning of the term. This course information material should be available by pushing "Undergraduate Students" button referred in "Entrepreneurship Course Guide (leadership, Value Creation)" page on the ToTAL website (https://www.total.titech.ac.jp/en/lead_innov/).
(2) Students will form teams based on their proposed business ideas (new product or service ideas) and verify their feasibility. The verification of the business ideas will involve repeated interviews with potential customers to determine whether there is a customer base that desires the proposed new product or service. Depending on the results, the appeal of the proposed new product/service will be changed, or the target customer base will be changed, and the search will continue.
(3) Based on the results of the interviews, students will be able to present a business plan and logically explain the high probability of market expansion.
(4) An external expert who is familiar with this program and has extensive experience in developing startups will accompany and advise the student teams, enabling them to set logical next steps and change direction.

Course schedule/Objectives

Study advice (preparation and review)

Textbook(s)

Course materials are provided during classes.

Reference books, course materials, etc.

Reference books, lecture materials, etc. will be provided during class from time to time.

Evaluation methods and criteria

Students will be assessed on the achievement of the learning outcomes such as proposing the practical ideas for solving the social issues, consensus building in the group, dealing with the feedback from the society, and so on, as well as on the rationality of discussion and contribution to collaboration work.

Related courses

• ENT.V206 ： Bachelor's Practical Group Work for Value Creation B

Prerequisites

None

Contact information (e-mail and phone) Notice : Please replace from ”[at]” to ”@”(half-width character).

Prof. Yamada, Prof. Matsuzaki (total.tokunin[at]total.titech.ac.jp)

Office hours

Personal meetings can be booked upon request; we also have drop-in virtual office hours on Friday, 13:00-14:00, except for holidays. For detail please submit a request from the form below:
https://forms.gle/kCDtXz2NcwHy8kSC9