ATM’s Entrepreneurship Micro-Course Series Receives SIF Funding

The ATM is excited to announce that its proposal, Mini entrepreneurship-portfolio to kickstart a translational medicine education platform, has been awarded $100,562 by UBC Faculty of Medicine’s Strategic Investment Fund (SIF) in the Translational Medicine stream. The purpose of the project is to pilot a new platform for entrepreneurial micro-courses that advance translational medicine education by supporting FoM learners and faculty in meeting evolving career requirements. This will serve as a kick-start for a modern and nimble translational medicine education platform within the FoM.

The ATM entrepreneurship micro-course series has been developed and is delivered as a strategic cross-faculty initiative by the Faculty of Medicine with support from the Sauder School of Business and assistance from entrepreneurship@UBC. The pilot platform offers micro-courses to  FoM students, staff and faculty at no cost. Two of the modules have already taken place – more information on the micro-course series can be found here.

In module 1, Problem Mapping & the Value Proposition Canvas, participants learned to use the Value Proposition Canvas to hypothesize about customers’ needs. The ability to think of value propositions for real people is fundamental to creating a successful company and is the critical first step in the customer discovery process participants learned about in future modules.

In module 2, Understanding the Competitive Landscape, participants learned to map current and future competitors and potential partners to understand the space that they want to play in. Guest speaker Dr. Corey Nislow gave an overview of the steps involved in the development of a new drug based on experiences from his own career, including working at several biotechnology companies, Stanford University, University of Toronto and now as a professor at the UBC Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences. The ability to understand the market is fundamental to creating a successful company and is a critical step in the successful approach to raising funds for a new company.

To learn about upcoming courses, please visit our Entrepreneurship Micro-Courses web page.

The Faculty of Medicine created a Strategic Investment Fund (SIF) to invest in advancing its strategic plan, Building the Future: 2021-2026, which describes the FoM’s vision and values, expresses the commitments in its contracts with society and with itself, and identifies one goal and four strategies for each of the four pillars: EducationResearchOrganization, and Partnership. More information about SIF can be found here (UBC corporate login may be required).

We are grateful for the support for this initiative provided by the Faculty of Medicine and continue working closely with UBC Sauder School of Business, e@UBC, UBC Extended Learning and UBC FoM Education Pillar Leads on achieving the goals set out by the project proposal.

If you have any questions about the Mini entrepreneurship portfolio project, please feel free to reach out to translational.medicine@ubc.ca.