This course focuses on market entry analysis and is conducted in cooperation with our corporate partner, Redstone, a leading European venture capital firm. One of Redstone’s portfolio companies is currently seeking new growth opportunities outside Europe. An in-depth market attractiveness assessment of the construction and engineering market in the U.S. will be the focus of this course and inform Redstone’s investment decision. In particular, market size estimation, competitor and customer research, price and product benchmarking, market trends, barriers to entry and a potential go-to-market strategy will form key analytical pieces shaping the market entry and investment decisions.

Student teams will compete to provide the most relevant analysis and recommendation in the mid-term and final presentations.

Tentative schedule:

·        1. Lecture: Course and project introduction with Redstone [in-person]

·        2. Skill session [in-person]

·        3. Coaching session 1 [online]

·        4. Mid-term presentation [in-person]

·        5. Coaching session 2 [online]

·        6. Final presentation [in-person]

After completing this project students will have:

• developed a strategic toolkit to analyze complex, real-life investment opportunities
• applied theoretical frameworks to aspects of market attractiveness and entry
• learned how to structure their storyline for investors and C-Level management
• improved their presentation and project management skills

Students will be able to:

• critically assess business opportunities and logically structure their investment hypotheses
• engage and interact in diverse and multi-cultural team settings
• effectively organize teamwork and structure their workload
• improve their communication and presentation skills in front of a corporate partner and in international/ multi-lingual settings
• convincingly and coherently pitch their recommendations in a practitioner-oriented and professional manner

Students have to attend at least 80% of the scheduled sessions in order to meet the attendance requirements. However, there is a compulsory attendance for sessions 1,2, 4, and 6. Further, it is not possible to collect participation points in case of absence.

Classes will be interactive. The course will be taught in two formats (lectures and presentations are in-person, coaching sessions are online). The principal teaching methods used will be lectures, group presentations, discussions and coaching with feedback for the groups.

The course grade will be determined as follows:

- Participation (20%)

- Mid Term Presentation (30%)

- Final Presentation (40%)

- Peer Rating (10%)

As a basic principle, all members of a group receive one grade for the group work. I expect that each group member contributes equally to the project work. The peer-rating is included in the assessment of the individual performance.

Grading scheme: <60% =5; 60-69%=4; 70-79%=3; 80-89%=2; 90-100%=1.

Prerequisites for WU students: completed course 1 (Foundations) and course 2 (Applications). The course is open to all exchange students with an interest in international business.

Please log in with your WU account to use all functionalities of read!t. For off-campus access to our licensed electronic resources, remember to activate your VPN connection connection. In case you encounter any technical problems or have questions regarding read!t, please feel free to contact the library at readinglists@wu.ac.at.