Course Overview

Tough tech ventures face both high levels of technology and commercial pathway uncertainty, and therefore demand their own strategies and tactics for managing risk vs. reward. Historically, most entrepreneurship courses (at HBS, and elsewhere) disproportionately focus on consumer- and /or software-centric business model and product experimentation tools (e.g., business model canvas, Lean Startup methodology) which are optimized for venture opportunities with relatively low technological and/or market uncertainty.

While tough technology has the potential to transform incumbent industries and tackle our most pressing societal issues, the tough tech ventures which design and deploy these solutions confront a number of challenges that are distinct from those faced by more mainstream startups. This course has been built from the ground up to dig deeply into these challenges and to provide impactful and actionable frameworks which build on all the tools learned so far at HBS to overcome them in order to drive impact at scale.

Career Focus

This course has been specifically designed for students who are considering founding, joining or investing in tough tech ventures upon, or soon after, graduation. While the course is focused on advanced technology, students need not have a technical background, merely a passion for making an impact through participation in these ventures. The primary objective of this course is to enable students to holistically understand and evaluate tough tech ventures at the various stages of their development, identify specific commercialization frictions and apply a set of strategies to overcome those challenges and successfully lead these ventures to scale in order to generate financial returns and deliver the intended impact.

Key Learning Objectives

• Understand key founding and funding models for tough tech innovation
• Define tough tech R&D and product roadmaps, incorporating intellectual property concerns and “technoeconomic” forecasting
• Articulate paths to market and business models while accounting for tough tech value chains and competition
• Explore and negotiate strategic partnerships and investments
• Analyze the tough tech lifecycle financing sources and tradeoffs from early grants and equity to later stage deployment capital
• Examine global and local market failures that affect tough tech ventures and policy interventions that may stimulate (or stymy) the investment in, and scalability, of these ventures
• Identify best practices for designing, building, incenting and leading successful tough tech teams
  
  

Course Content & Organization

The main class tool will be case discussions based on a variety of tough tech ventures, including those pursuing frontier clean energy, material science, biotech and aerospace technologies. We will have case protagonists and guests in every class including tough tech entrepreneurs, investors and domain experts so you can engage directly with these practicioners from the burgeoning tough tech venture ecosystem. Additionally, the course will borrow heavily from Professor Matheson’s activities in founding, leading and investing in tough tech ventures and Professor Krieger’s research on R&D strategy and tough tech ventures.

Grading will be a combination of class participation, periodic written reflections and a final written case done in small Teams.

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