Pre-accelerator Final Year Project: Supporting student start-ups, empowering innovations

Formerly coded as EG4301A, CDE4301A Ideas to Start-up is offered to final year undergraduate students in the Innovation & Design Programme who are interested to pursue commercialisation of their project ideas. This two-semester module builds upon the principles of the Lean LaunchPad and the Disciplined Entrepreneurship framework to accelerate students’ understanding of the entrepreneurial process and enables further development of their ideas/projects into viable and sustainable ventures. In the process, students will learn to identify the customer and market, develop a minimum viable product (MVP) using design and engineering skills that they have garnered throughout their undergraduate study and design a viable business model. Students will also learn the mechanics of company building, for example company formation, fund raising and intellectual property strategy.

External investors, start-up founders, mentors and lawyers are invited to the classes to enable students to learn from their experience and feedback first-hand. At the end of the two semesters, the students deliver an investment pitch on demo day to potential investors.

Workload: 12 units (modular credits) across two consecutive semesters from August to May