A Practicum in Entrepreneurship -- A lecture at Prague University of Economics

Ealier this month I had the opportunity to address the students of Cognitive Informatics at Prague University of Economics to discuss my experiences and perspectives on transforming a creative idea into business.  The lecture was organized by Professor Vaclav Repa.  With zAgile serving as the example model for the presentation and discussion, it was an interesting opportunity to talk about how the idea was conceived and all the steps that we have gone through with respect to early research, concept validation, product development, market analysis, category definition, etc., as well as the challenges that lie ahead of us.   This was my third presentation to an academic audience  (the first two in South America to students at Pontificia Universidad Católica in Chile and UFES - Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo in Brazil).  A shift from the previous presentations, the interest in this particular session was primarily the business (revenue model, marketing strategies, etc) aspects of enterprise incubation rather than the technology behind the vision.  I enjoyed sharing our vision and progress with the students and also gave them a product demo (a sneak preview of sorts).