Dr. Özgür Zan
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Teaching · Bahçeşehir University · MBA

Entrepreneurship & Innovation Management

The MBA course I teach at Bahçeşehir University: from an uncertain opportunity to an evidence-based venture and a four-minute investor pitch, in the order the work actually happens.

Fall 2026 syllabus

Course purpose

This course helps students move from an uncertain opportunity to an evidence-based venture and a concise investor pitch. Teams progressively develop the same venture across customer discovery, market selection, product definition, business and revenue logic, experimentation, financial modeling, go-to-market planning and investor readiness.

The course is practice-led. Each assignment becomes an input to the final four-minute investor pitch, while the final exam assesses each student’s individual understanding of the concepts and decisions developed during the course.

Learning outcomes

  1. 01Frame an opportunity under uncertainty and distinguish assumptions from evidence.
  2. 02Conduct primary market research and translate customer evidence into an opportunity hypothesis.
  3. 03Select a beachhead market, estimate TAM and explain the assumptions behind the calculation.
  4. 04Develop a persona, customer journey, decision-making unit and quantified value proposition.
  5. 05Define a product, its core, potential moats, competitive position and relevant IP considerations.
  6. 06Choose a business model, revenue model and pricing logic that fit the customer and market.
  7. 07Design an MVP and experiment, assess product-market fit indicators and calculate early unit economics.
  8. 08Build and interpret a basic financial model covering assumptions, P&L, cash flow, runway and scenarios.
  9. 09Create a go-to-market and founder-led sales plan, including channels, funnel, conversion and CAC assumptions.
  10. 10Prepare and deliver a four-minute investor pitch supported by a deck, financial model and evidence.

Course format

Classes are delivered live through Microsoft Teams. Teaching combines short lectures, worked examples, discussion, workshops, student deliveries and team project development. At the beginning of each teaching week, one student will summarize the previous week in no more than five minutes.

The 14-week design

The full course. A shorter term drops the weeks noted on its syllabus page.

  1. Week 1Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Uncertainty
  2. Week 2Opportunity Discovery, Design Thinking and Effectuation
  3. Week 3Primary Market Research and Customer Discovery
  4. Week 4Market Segmentation, Beachhead Market and Market Size
  5. Week 5Persona, Customer Journey, DMU and Quantified Value
  6. Week 6Product Definition, Core, IP and Competitive Positioning
  7. Week 7Business Model, Pricing, Unit Economics and Financial Logic
  8. Week 8MVP, Experimentation, Product-Market Fit, Early Unit Economics and Financial Modeling
  9. Week 9Go-to-Market, Customer Acquisition and Entrepreneurial Sales
  10. Week 10Funding Strategy, Investor Readiness and Investor Pitch
  11. Week 11Guest Speaker
  12. Week 12Project Presentations I — Investor Pitch
  13. Week 13Project Presentations II — Autopsy Presentations
  14. Week 14Final Exam

Terms

Each term has its own syllabus page: schedule, assignments, team project, grading, policies and books.