The Entrepreneurship Workshop for Research Students – EWRS ran over the course of the winter semester of 2019-20. A long pre-semester session was held Sep 2019, followed by 10 sessions over the course of the semester.
The audience was a mix of Technion MSC, PHD students and 2 postdoc fellows. All together 20 students with representation to many faculties: Civil Eng., EE, IE&M, CS, Medicine, Physics, Architecture and Mech.Eng.
The students split into 4 working groups to develop a novel business plan throughout the workshop.
Topics covered: Opportunity selection, IP, financing, marketing, presentation skills, etc.
Sessions involved academic presentation + use cases (typically by a guest lecturer) and team work.
We have asked our students what was the workshop’s main contribution. Here are some of the responses we got:
- This program is something really different from traditional courses. I think that the main contribution is “a bit of anything” regarding entrepreneurship (aspects of it: research, market, patents, presentation skills, etc.), so I know ‘what is out there’.
- Business relationships with EWRS lecturers
- Hearing from people which went through an entrepreneurship path through various aspects.
- Mainly hearing the professionals, that is, the VCs, IP lawyers, the “Sharks” at the closing sessions, and the presentation skills session.
- Clear understanding of the obstacles facing a young company/entrepreneur in order to get to the market
