MicroMasters® Program in Entrepreneurship

All participants will get the opportunity to participate in a 2-hour idea generation workshop.

Using the Day-in-a-Life methodology, they will learn to generate a list of pain points as the starting point, or seed, for their idea. These pain points will be further developed into rough business ideas through interactive process with the facilitator. The business ideas will then be screened for doability and customer’s willingness to pay using proprietary filters.

Facilitator: Anurag Rastogi

• Former DGM (Corporate Strategy) at Mahindra Group – managed the portfolio, provided advisory support and incubation to new businesses for a $20 bn diversified conglomerate
• Former Managing Consultant at IBM Global 
  
• Former Assistant Vice President at HSBC
  
• Master’s Degree from Tufts University and Harvard Business School 
  
• PGP from ISB Hyderabad
  
• Bachelor of Technology from IIT Delhi
  

Pitch Day

In Pitch Day, each participant is eligible to present their ‘pitch deck’ for a new venture. Participants will also receive constructive feedback on their idea from a qualified and experienced advisor.

Reward

Top 3 selected pitches will be awarded with a certificate of honor.

Why the Lean Start-up Changes Everything?

In the past few years, a new methodology for launching companies, called "the lean start-up," has begun to replace the old regimen. Traditionally, a venture's founders would write a business plan, complete with a five-year forecast, use it to raise money, and then go into "stealth mode" to develop their offerings, all without getting much feedback from the people they intended to sell to. Lean start-ups, in contrast, begin by searching for a business model. They test, revise, and discard hypotheses, continually gathering customer feedback and rapidly iterating on and reengineering their products. This strategy greatly reduces the chances that start-ups will spend a lot of time and money launching products that no one actually will pay for. Blank, a consulting associate professor at Stanford, is one of the architects of the lean start-up movement and has seen this approach help businesses get off the ground quickly and successfully. He believes that if it's widely adopted, it would reduce the incidence of start-up failure. In combination with other trends, such as open source software and the democratization of venture financing, it could ignite a new, more entrepreneurial economy. There are numerous indicators that the approach is catching on: Business schools and universities are incorporating lean start-up principles into their curricula. Even more interesting, large companies like GE are applying them to internal innovation initiatives.

Canadian Jet just launched a social media contest: The traveler who posts the most creative tweet using the hashtag #CanJetLuxury will win two round-trip tickets to any of the airline's destinations. The head of public relations conceived the campaign in an attempt to improve the airline's tarnished reputation. But within the first 24 hours of the contest, unhappy customers have hijacked the hashtag and are using it to air their complaints about the company's frequent delays and labor relations.

Now the head of PR needs to decide whether to pull the contest, change the hashtag, or simply ignore the bashes. Some of her team members think the company should apologize as well. But for what, exactly?

Facilitated by:

Anshul Kaushesh
Program Director, Product and Content Marketing Practice at IBM, Bengaluru

Past experience includes:

• Program Director, Marketing, Hybrid Cloud Storage, North America at IBM (USA)
  
• Brand Systems and Communications Leader, Asia Pacific at IBM
  
• Marketing Manager, Software Acquisitions at IBM
  
• Senior Marketing Consultant at IBM
  
• Principal Consultant at Vertebrand Management Consulting
  
• Consulting Editor at ICFAI Business School
  
• Deputy Manager at Axis Bank
  
• PGDM, Marketing from IIM Kozhikode
  

In this single-player simulation by Harvard Business Publishing, participants act as the CEO of Sunflower Nutraceuticals, a distributor of dietary supplements. In 3 phases over 10 simulated years, students consider investment opportunities in revenue and EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) growth and cash flow improvements.

The firm operates on thin margins with a constrained cash position and limited credit. Students must understand how the income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows are interconnected as they analyze the effects of each opportunity on working capital. The goal is to choose opportunities that add the most value to the firm and balance the desire for growth with the need for maintaining liquidity.

Facilitated by:

Aniket Khera

Co-Founder, Willow Investment Management LLC

Aniket manage an India-focused public-markets fund and conducts academic research on emerging markets with a special emphasis on India, and invest in India-based startups. His philosophy of investment revolves around a value approach of assessing an intrinsic value, planning an appropriate margin of safety and making the most of market cycles based on greed and fear.

Earlier Aniket served as Investment Officer at Wegmans Financial Services Ltd. where he managed the India Value Fund. Before setting out on his career in finance, he served as a Senior Manager, Product Development at GlobalLogic. He has also been a Software Engineer at Cisco Systems, Inc.

Aniket is a graduate from IIT Delhi and an MBA, Marketing and Finance from The University of Texas at Dallas.

This case study focuses on Pennzoil's motor oil business.

It addresses a wide range of business strategy issues regarding how a firm chooses its scope to create competitive advantage in its core business. "Scope" can be broadly defined to include vertical scope (forward and backward integration), horizontal scope (multiple related products), and geographic scope (multiple market locations).

Ashutosh Mishra

Head of Corporate Sales, Markets India at a large Australian Bank

Past experience includes:

• Head of Macro Sales - Corporate & Institutions at Goldman Sachs • Director & Head of Flow Sales at Deutsche Bank
• Manager - Treasury Sales at American Express Bank
  
• Manager - Treasury at ICICI Bank
  

MBA in Finance, Marketing, Management from XLRI Jamshedpur B.Tech Mechanical Engineering from IIT Delhi