CodeBase Bridge
A University of Edinburgh course delivered by CodeBase
CodeBase has launched CodeBase Bridge: Playbooks for Building Startups, a course for Postgraduate students at the University of Edinburgh.
The course is for students who are keen to learn more about technology startup thinking, innovation and entrepreneurship. It serves as an introduction for students with early-stage startup ideas, and those at the beginning of the ideation process.
Funded by the Edinburgh Futures Institute, created to offer new kinds of interdisciplinary, data-informed, and innovative education and research, the accredited, elective course focuses on three key things:
Turning an idea into a sustainable business
Breaking down barriers to the startup world by demystifying the jargon around tech entrepreneurship
Sharing toolkits and frameworks of product and service innovation to give students the power to respond to fast change and cultivate resilience in a turbulent world
On completion of the course, students will see how startups can challenge existing markets and create new ones; build a company differently by taking an iterative, learning-driven and customer-focused approach; become more playbook-literate and demonstrate a critical understanding for theories, concepts and principles within startup culture, and more.
“To have CodeBase inside the Edinburgh Futures Institute, bringing their imagination and wisdom is so special. Not only do they provide experience in the essential items for a startup playbook, they bring seasoned entrepreneurs who advise students how they have used them toward personal business success.”
The course is delivered through a pre-intensive phase, where students are invited to form teams and use discussion boards to learn from each other. This is followed by an intensive 2 day course delivered by industry experts.
After the intensive the post-intensive phase introduces the assignment and invites students to discuss what they have learned. Contributors to the course include:
Danae Shell, Co-Founder and CEO of Valla
Alex Durussel-Baker (Founder) and Andy Irvine (Director of Innovation) of Korero Studio
Julie Grieve, Founder of Criton
Rob Green, Head of Product at Give Panel
Simone Ishikawa, Founder of Ishikoo.
“We’ve been engaging with startup curious students for years - albeit in an unstructured way, with much enthusiasm, but little dedicated content. That’s why we are so excited about the CodeBase Bridge programme we are now running with the University of Edinburgh. It’s the first university accredited course that CodeBase has run. We can’t wait to see more future startup founders come from Scotland’s student base, and hope this programme will help inspire and equip them to do so.”
“CodeBase Bridge is a really great example of how introducing entrepreneurial startup building skills to students of wide ranging disciplines can bring startups to life. We made CodeBase Bridge a really practically applicable course where students are immediately able to put the theory they’ve learned from current and recent startup operators into practice with a social innovation challenge, or even their own ideas. The intensive phase introduced market positioning, understanding customers, experimentation and iteration, and investment and pitching. It really was intensive, but the energising discussions taking place during the workshops showed just how exciting a topic this is.””