The business of turning ideas into reality

Aims of the course

This course aims to:
1. Cover the fundamentals of taking an idea and turning it into a prototype business;
2. Provide a framework for new entrepreneurs to select and test out an idea;
3. Create a basic understanding of how to develop approaches to money, marketing, people and operations.

Course content

The world needs new ideas and is potentially more accepting of change than ever before: perhaps there has never been a better time to act upon your best ideas and make an impact. There is a constant stream of new technologies alongside other more matured ones that together provide a fertile space that can stimulate exciting connections across sectors, disciplines and geographies, enabling access to new customers, suppliers and investors, and fostering collaborations that may have been previously inaccessible.

Getting going with a new idea is often the hardest part of this process and is the stage during which you will have to make a range of decisions that are most likely new and hard to make. This course covers a wide range of topics: selecting the best idea to pursue; planning; overcoming fear of failure; creating a solid customer proposition; and finding money. It should help you to navigate the first few stages of development and get you to a stage where you can be more confident that what you are doing, while risky, has some likelihood of success.

Cambridge has developed into one of the most successful centres of innovation in the world, where the ecosystem that surrounds entrepreneurs has become a rich and dynamic source of expertise, support and finance, providing you with the perfect setting to explore the business of turning ideas into reality.

Presentation of the course

The course will be taught as a group workshop with the workshop leader starting each session with a description of the topic using examples. This will lead into a self-driven session where participants work to apply the theory and examples to their own context. 

Class sessions

1. Assessing the world and what needs fixing
This session covers working out what it is you are going to fix by defining what problem or opportunity you have found and ensuring that it is worth fixing.

2. Selecting ideas
It’s easy to have many ideas but choosing the right one is hard. This session covers how to evaluate the ideas you have to select ones that are most likely to work for you.

3. Understanding your business environment 
This session covers how to research your target business context in terms of market dynamics and specifically competition.

4. Creating a business structure
This session covers the basics of what is needed legally and operationally to get started including choosing what sort of company to create.

5. Acquiring people and resources 
This session covers looking at what sort of people and resources you are going to need, or skills you are going to have to develop, and how you might access them.

6. Raising money 
This session covers understanding how much money you are going to need to get going, how long that lasts and what you need to do before it runs out.

7. Developing a business model 
This session covers designing the model by which you create value for your customers and how you expect to get paid for that value generation.

8. Setting up operationally 
This session looks at the primary tasks and systems you will need to identify to start operating including email, webhosting, accounting, CRM and many more.

9. Developing a first product or service 
This covers the process of creating your first version of your product or service, including what’s included and what’s not.

10. Marketing and communications 
This covers how to start telling the world about what you have created, who to target, through which channels and with which messages.

Learning outcomes

The learning outcomes for this course are:
1. Understanding of the wider business environment and finding a gap – a need or an opportunity;
2. Understanding of how starting a business involves many interrelated activities;
3. Understanding of what it takes to bring a new product or service to market.

Required reading

There are no required readings for this course.

Typical week: Monday to Friday

Courses run from Monday to Friday. For each week of study, you select a morning (Am) course and an afternoon (Pm) course. The maximum class size is 25 students. 

Courses are complemented by a series of daily plenary lectures, exploring new ideas in a wide range of disciplines. To add to the learning experience, we are also planning additional evening talks and events.

Evaluation and Academic Credit 

If you are seeking to enhance your own study experience, or earn academic credit from your Cambridge Summer Programme studies at your home institution, you can submit written work for assessment for one or more of your courses. 

Essay questions are set and assessed against the University of Cambridge standard by your Course Director, a list of essay questions can be found in the Course Materials. Essays are submitted two weeks after the end of each course, so those studying for multiple weeks need to plan their time accordingly. There is an evaluation fee of £75 per essay.

For more information about writing essays see Evaluation and Academic Credit.

Certificate of attendance

A certificate of attendance will be sent to you electronically after the programme.