Course syllabus

Course-PM

TIF181 / FIM782 Science, Innovation and Entrepreneurship lp2 HT24 (7.5 hp)

Course is offered by the Chalmers Department of Physics

Contact details

Examiner
Christoph Langhammer:	clangham@chalmers.se
Fredrik Höök:	fredrik.hook@chalmers.se
Lecturers
Fredrik Höök:	fredrik.hook@chalmers.se
Christoph Langhammer:	clangham@chalmers.se
Anne Alsholm:	anne.alsholm@chalmers.se
Erik Mattson:	erik@ordrum.se
Joachim Fritzsche:	joafri@chalmers.se

 

Course purpose

The aim is to present and discuss the important interplay between scientific innovation, communication, entrepreneurship and project management for the development of innovative products and processes that create impact in society, based on "deep-tech" inventions. Specifically, you will get acquainted with invention identification and strategies to transfer inventions onto innovations to the benefit of society, and with the patent writing and evaluation process. You will also train your abilities to find information in patent and scientific literature databases. Furthermore, you will discuss the art of transferring the potential value of an invention into a working business on the basis of recent real examples and of your own project work. Finally, you will get familiarized with key concepts of project management, and apply them in your project works, in which you also train your abilities to communicate innovations to different stakeholders in society.

 

Schedule

TimeEdit

Date	Time	Place	Topic	Lecturer/Presenter
Tue 11/05	13:15 - 15:00	FL51	Intro	C. Langhammer
Thu 11/07	13:15 - 15:00	FL71	What is a patent?	F. Höök
Thu 11/07	15:15 - 17:00	FT4011	Patent & literature database search	F. Höök
Tue 11/12	13:15 - 15:00	FL71	Writing patent claims	A. Alsholm
Wed 11/13	DEADLINE R1
Thu 11/14	13:15 - 16:00	PJ salen	Communicating Inventions & Innovations - Pitching	E. Mattsson
Thu 11/21	13:15 - 15:00	FL71	Theory of Innovation	F. Höök
Tue 11/26	13:15 - 15:00	FL71	Theory of Project Management	C. Langhammer
Tue 11/26	DEADLINE R2
Thu 11/28	13:15 - 17:00	PJ salen	Presentations of Project P1	C. Langhammer & F. Höök
Tue 12/03	13:15 - 15:00	FL71	Project Management Application	C. Langhammer
Thu 12/05	13:15 - 15:00	PJ Salen	Writing a popular science text	Fredrik Höök
Fri 12/06	DEADLINE R3
Tue 12/10	13:15 - 15:00	FL71	Entrepreneurship example I	ConScience AB
Thu 12/12	13:15 - 15:00	ML 11	Making a budget	F. Höök
Tue 12/17	13:15 - 15:00	FL71	Entrepreneurship example I	Amferia AB
Wed 12/18	DEADLINE R4
To 12/19	13:15 - 17:00	FL51/PJ-salen	Presentations of Project P2	C. Langhammer & F. Höök
Fri 01/10 2025	DEADLINE R5

Course literature

Handouts at lectures, as well as references therein.

Course structure

The course is divided into three modules, each comprising lectures on topics relevant for the respective module, and a project group work that builds on the skills conveyed during the lectures.

Module M1 is focused on the invention and innovation process as such, addressing questions like “what is an invention” and "what is an innovation", and the interplay between research and entrepreneurship when creating an innovation that might have impact on society. Specifically, it will give hands-on experience with patent and literature databases, with how patents and patent claims are written and composed, and how an invention/innovation can be communicated effectively to stakeholders. As part of this module you will work on a project in groups (project “Invention Identification”) with the main aim to identify an invention in a very recent high-profile scientific publication and to communicate this invention to the class in “pitch” format. You will also hand in two written reports: Report R1 – Research Article Selection, and Report R2 – Project Invention Identification. The expected report content and structure are described in more detail below.

Module M2 is focused on generating your own inventions based on the first project work, and on project management when planning an innovation process both in theory and practice based on this invention. It is centered on a second project (“Innovation Generation and Entrepreneurship”) to be carried out in “supergroups” created by merging several teams from the first project module M1. The result of the supergroup project is to be presented by the whole supergroup to all students of the course. You will also hand in two written reports: Report R3 – Short Action Plan, and Report R4 – Innovation Generation and Entrepreneurship.  The expected report content and structure are described in more detail below. The general setup of the project work aims at giving you hands-on experience with mastering project management.

Bonus Module M3 is giving you the opportunity to improve your grade to 4 or 5. To do that you are expected to write a popular science text of not more than 500 words, in which you communicate the outcome of the “Invention generation and Project Management” project work to a specific target group of your own choice, such as for example business angles, investors, the general public or school children.

Support by teachers: To support you during your project works, for each project your group must book one appointment with with Christoph or Fredrik (you will be appointed to one of them) to discuss the task as such, as well as the content of the scientific articles (project 1) and of your invention and business idea (project 2). More information about how to book your slots for consultancy will be given at course start. Note that these consultancy meetings will take place digitally on Zoom in most cases to offer flexibility in terms of finding slots. Also note that booking them well in advance with the teachers is recommended since they tend to have full schedules.

Learning objectives and syllabus

After taking this course you will be able to:

• Find information in both patent and literature databases.
• Analyze the content of patents and compare it with the content of related scientific articles, and vice versa.
• Identify how inventions presented in scientific articles are translated into patents.
• Understand and apply the basics in patent (claim) writing and the requirement for getting a patent accepted.
• Understand the basics of project management and its challenges, as well as get some hands-on experience with applying elements of project management in your own project group work.
• Communicate an invention to different stakeholders in society and write a “popular science” text.
• Understand the interplay and connected challenges between invention, innovation and entrepreneurship, that is, how to transform an invention into a useful product for society.

 

Deliverables and examination

To pass the course, you have to actively participate in and contribute to all the deliverables listed in the table below. In other words, all these items are compulsory, with the exception of R5, which is a bonus task to improve your grade.

 

	Deliverable	Short Description	Grading	Due-date
R1	1-page report:  “Research article selection”	A max. 1 page written summary of what you have identified as “the inventions” in three high-profile scientific publications of your choice. Based on this report, through feedback from the examiners, you will chose one of the articles to focus on in the first project work.	Pass or fail   Teacher feedback	Wednesday, Nov. 13th
R2	Written project report:  “Invention Identification”	Evaluate the innovative component of a scientific article and evaluate the patent and scientific literature landscape related to the identified invention in groups of 3 or 4 students (exact number defined at course start) and summarize your finding in a written report, as detailed below.	Graded	Tuesday Nov. 26th
P1	Oral presentation of project R2	Short oral presentation of max. 10 minutes in “pitching format” where you present the key findings of project R2 to the class and selected teachers.	Graded   Teacher feedback	Thursday, Nov. 28th, 13:15-17:00
R3	Written report: “Action-plan for project work R4”	Describe in max. 1000 words how your group will organize the work to achieve the goals of project R4 “Invention generation and project management”.	Pass or fail   Teacher feedback	Thursday, Dec. 5th
R4	Written project report:  “Invention generation and entrepreneurship”	On the basis of the inventions identified and analyzed in the “Invention Identification” project, the project teams will be merged into a number of ’supergroups’. In these supergroups you will have to come up with a new and patentable invention that builds on the (already public) inventions presented in the research articles you have analyzed within R2. For the proposed innovation process, you will: (i) write your own patent claims and (ii) identify and formulate a real business case for a virtual start-up company. The above is to be summarized in a project report as detailed below.	Graded	Tuesday, Dec. 17th
P2	Oral presentation of project R4	Each supergroup presents its project in an oral presentation comprised (i) of a pitch of the business idea based on the proposed innovation and (ii) a presentation, motivation and discussion of the patent claims.	Graded	Thursday Dec. 19th
R5	Written report: “Going for top grade 4 or 5 or improve grade from 3 to 4”	Popular science text (max. 500 words) in which you communicate the outcome of the “Invention generation and Project Management” project work to a specific target group of your own choice.	Graded	Friday Jan. 10th

Detailed description of projects and deliverables

R1 - Research article selection

Task:

Search the scientific literature and find three research articles not older than 12 months that must be from one of the following journals: Science, Science Advances, PNAS, Nature, Nature Chemistry, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Materials, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Physics, Nature Methods, Nature Communications, Angewandte Chemie, Nano Letters, ACS Nano and Advanced Materials. The topics of the selected articles must be related to are Life Science, Materials Science or Nanoscience/Nanotechnology.

The report:

Summarize on not more than 1 page in total the core of the inventions made in the three articles you have selected. In a dialogue with the examiners after having handed-in this report, you decide which of the three selected articles will be used for the next step of the project work.

R2 - Invention Identification Project

Task:

Evaluate if the invention you have identified in the article selected in R1 is patented, if there are conflicting patents that may prevent patenting or if there are patents that may infer freedom to operate.

1. Based on the criteria above, identify three to five patents, which are related to the invention described in the scientific article. Furthermore, at least one additional invention that is either directly based on or topically closest to the invention described in your scientific article must be evaluated with respect to what components that provide (or do not provide) unique innovative height with respect to existing public knowledge.
2.  By scrutinizing both patent and scientific databases, identify, summarize and motivate three so called “pre-adaptations” for the identified invention of your article, i.e. previously generated key knowledge or inventions without which the present invention would not have been possible, but which were generated without any direct connection to or awareness of (e.g. by a different team of researchers) the technical challenge solved by the present invention.

The report:

You find a template with the expected content illustrated via suitable (sub-)titles and a maximum word count per section on the course homepage for download.

P1- Oral presentation of project R2

Based on the lecture(s) on how to pitch an innovative idea, you are expected to divide suitable tasks between group members, and figure out a means to, in ten minutes, best orally pitch the unique aspect of the invention of your article and how a successful innovation process based on this invention could make impact on society.

R3 - Action-plan for project work R4

Describe in not more than 1000 words how your group will organize the work to achieve the goals of project R4 “Innovation generation and project management” by addressing the following specific points:

• Who is doing what in the project, and why?
• What’s the time plan?
• What are the intermediate deliverables from each activity?

R4 – Innovation generation and entrepreneurship project

This project aims at implementing the theoretical knowledge you will get in mastering project management, pitching and presenting your ideas to the public / potential investors, and also builds on your knowledge from project R2 on how to evaluate new inventions and how to transform them into a business case.

The examiners form what we call ‘supergroups’. A supergroup is comprised of several groups from the R2 project work stage. On the basis of the research on particular scientific papers/ideas from R2; each ’supergroup’ should formulate one new idea in which true innovative height is reached by adding suitable components – despite the fact that each individual scientific article of R2 is public and thus as such not patentable. When such a potential invention has been identified, you will, guided by lectures on project management, carry out a group project that emerges in a small business case.

You should also train yourself to formulate a major/independent patent claim (claim 1) and at least five additional dependent/sub-claims, which are distinctly different from those of patent(s) identified in R2. While very exciting, this is a very demanding task. We will therefore accept novelty that emerges from i) identifying a novel use, i.e. a new market, even if the idea might not survive a novelty search, or ii) inclusion of an ‘imaginary’ (yet technologically realistic) feature that would make the invention novel.

The report:

You find a template with the expected content illustrated via suitable titles and maximum word counts per section on the homepage.

P2- Oral presentation of project R4

The whole group is responsible for the final presentation, however, not everyone must present on stage. Think carefully how to best utilize the skills and interests of your team.

In addition, prior to the presentation, the handed-in written report (R4) will be handed out to two another groups, which will prepare at least three questions to facilitate a discussion after the presentation.

Key components that must be included in the presentation are

• A max. 10 min pitch of your invention assuming the audience were potential investors where you address the following points:
  • What is the product?
  • Who is the consumer / what is the market?
  • What will you sell (service, components, device, knowhow, etc.)?
  • How and when will the market be reached?
  • How much money do you need and why?
• A max. 10 min more formal presentation where you discuss and describe the following points and how you tackled them to your teachers and colleagues:
  • How did you plan and organize the group in the supergroup project?
  • What have you learnt from a project management perspective from the entire exercise?
  • A more technical summary of your invention / inventive step followed by a discussion of how its novelty has been analyzed with respect to prior art based on searches in the relevant databases.
  • A discussion/presentation of how your pre-adaptations ultimately lead you to your invention to share this experience with your colleagues.
  • A presentation of your patent claims .

R5 – Going for top grade (optional)

As an option, you might want to attempt to increase your grade from 4 to 5 or from 3 to 4. For this an additional individual hand-in is required:

Summarize your group presentation (either R2 or R4) as a popular science article (500 words max with figures), following the recipes from the lecture on writing a popular

Grading

Your grade will be formed from:

• grade of the group report on the project R2 including the pitch in P1;
• grade of the group report R4 and presentation on the project P2.

These two grades are equally weighed. You will also receive written feedback from the teachers motivating your grades.

Even if each of these grades reaches the top grade, the final grade for the course can not be the top grade without an (optional) hand-in ‘Going for top grade’ R5.  

Attendance: to be graded it is necessary, in addition to compulsory hand-ins (see above), to attend:

• The writing a patent and claims lecture by Anne Alsholm
• The pitching lecture by Erik Mattson
• The project management lectures by Christoph Langhammer
• The "theory of innovation", as well as the "how to make a budget" lectures by Fredrik Höök
• The entrepreneurship example lectures I & II
• The P1- Oral presentation of project R2 session
• The P2- Oral presentation of project R4 session

If you cannot attend one of these lectures contact Christoph and Fredrik immediately to discuss a possible solution - importantly, do that before the lecture you cannot attend, not afterwards!