CenSES School of Entrepreneurship

Objectives

• Identify and investigate the commercial potential of early-stage ideas within the field of green energy solutions.
• Creating an entrepreneurial mindset and develop skills and capabilities for participants to take their research project out from the lab.
• Full participation in the program will give the participants a feasibility study related to the commercial potential of the idea.

The program

The program consists of three intensive seminars where the participants will receive skilled guidance and feedback on the commercial potential of their project. The seminars are practically oriented with a combination of lectures and hands-on guidance on relevant problems. A central goal is also to develop the participants' entrepreneurial skills and capabilities.

CenSES School of Entrepreneurship is organized in two parts over a period of six months.

Part one – open for 16 participants

The first part consists of two seminars and an in-between period:




 
The seminars will be a mixture of lectures and practical work with problems relevant for the development of the participants' own ideas. The problems will be worked with and discussed in lectures and in group-work. The lecturers have long experience in both teaching within their respecting fields and with the development of early-stage technology-based ideas. The lecturers and five MSc-students from the NTNU School of Entrepreneurship will actively take part in discussions giving feedback on projects during the seminars.

Each participant will have a dedicated and experienced MSc-student from NTNU School of Entrepreneurship as a consultant during and between the seminars. This person will act as a discussion partner and helping the participants to keep up the progress of developing their idea.

Part two – open for 8 participants

Before seminar 3, there will be a screening of the participants and their ideas. Only the 8 most promising ideas and motivated participants can join the last part of the program.

Feasibility study, Trondheim 3 – 6 September 2012

The second part of the program consists of an intensive seminar week at the NTNU. The seminar is in close collaboration with MSc-students from the NTNU School of Entrepreneurship. Each participant will perform a feasibility study of his/her idea together with a team of 3-4 dedicated MSc-students from the NTNU School of Entrepreneurship with supervision from academic staff. The teams will work from early morning until late night with special focus on market investigation. This work will end up in a development plan covering product description, product development, market analysis, price estimates, strategies for commercialization, business model and action plan for further work.

Credits

The CenSES School of Entrepreneurship will also be organized as a doctoral course.

Participation on seminar 1 and 2 plus hand-in of a project assignment before 1 November qualifies for a doctoral course of 10 ECTS.

What kind of ideas can participate?

As the CenSES School of Entrepreneurship has a limited number of places for participants, we will screen and evaluate the applications before the first seminar.
We are seeking for ideas within the field of environmentally friendly energy. This could be technologies/ideas beneficial for renewable energy production or projects on energy-saving.
The idea could either come from a research group/consortium which the applicant is a part of, or it could spin-off from the participants own research project.

Application

The application deadline is 23 February 2012. The application form should be filled out and sent to oyvind.bjorgum@iot.ntnu.no

All applicants will get an e-mail reply confirming that their application is received.
For questions and more information, do not hesitate to contact us!

Costs

There will be a participating fee of 4 000 NOK for part 1. This covers the whole course and includes all meals and accommodation for both seminar 1 and 2.

Participants must cover their own travel expenses.

Organisation

CenSES School of Entrepreneurship is a collaboration between CenSES and NTNU School of Entrepreneurship (NSE).

CenSES (Center for Sustainable Energy Systems) is a virtual research center engaged in studies on the framework conditions for the transition towards a sustainable energy system. The aim is to give decision making support for industry and policy makers seeking arguments and models for a green energy transition. CenSES integrates insight from different scientific fields as energy economics, energy system analysis, political science, sociology, innovation studies and technology studies. CenSES consists of about 60 professors, researchers and PhD-candidates from eight different Norwegian research communities.

NTNU School of Entrepreneurship is a two-year master's program in commercialization of technology combining theory with practice. The school of entrepreneurship is devoted to educating the future entrepreneurs and project managers of new technological business developments (both in startups and existing companies).

Project management

Professor Roger Sørheim, Department of Industrial Economics and Technology Management, NTNU

PhD-candidate Øyvind Bjørgum, the same department at NTNU

Do not hesitate to contact Øyvind if you have any questions:

Email: oyvind.bjorgum@iot.ntnu.no  or by phone (+47) - 73 59 09 64 / 970 14 723