The 45 participants from RSM’s Executive MBA (EMBA) Classes of 2016 and 2017, and Global Executive OneMBA Classes of 2016 and 2017 joined the bootcamp to develop their personal entrepreneurial attitude.

Moving forward

British EMBA student Rami Zaki said he had a start-up idea but “we were in need of guidance to validate our idea and push us the extra yard to transform our business idea to something tangible.” He said the ECE bootcamp was useful in enabling him to further develop his start-up idea. “We now better understand our customers and are becoming more customer-centric, and can move forward in small increments or pilots,” said Zaki.

The ECE bootcamp was organised by the Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship. It is a dynamic mix of mini masterclasses, team presentations, break-out workshop sessions, and an energetic pitch training and competition. Each student team must enter the bootcamp with at least one very rough, initial business idea.

 In this workshop, students explored opportunity evaluation and refinement, business modeling, customer development, assumption identification and testing. “Entrepreneurship is not just about start-ups,” says Dr Ferdinand Jaspers, programme director at ECE. “Entrepreneurship is a bigger, greater thing relevant for any professional in any organisation. It’s becoming more and more important,” he said.

Impact on society

The adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at RSM added that customer orientation becomes a topic of more importance in large companies these days. “That is, according to me, what entrepreneurship is all about – creating value and capturing it.”

Jaspers said he notices that master and MBA students want to have a purpose in life. “There is always a bigger thing behind what they’re doing on a daily basis, and entrepreneurship is the answer to that. It helps them create value, have an impact on society or specific users or customers.”