SM9715 Innovation and Entrepreneurship Assessment Brief 2025-26 | NU

SM9715 Assignment Brief 

• Your assessment work consists of

(i) a case study on a digital business and
(ii) write a reflective statement on your learning experience, team presentation (please see below), the feedback you received and how you made use of this feedback. 

• The case study and reflective statement are both INDIVIDUAL pieces of work, and together, they represent 100% of the module mark.
• Assessment criteria for both components are (i) informativeness, (ii) engagement with relevant literature, (iii) analysis and (iv) structure and writing. For clarity, in the reflective statement component, relevant literature corresponds to the literature on professional skills (e.g. project management, leadership), and analysis refers to using analytical skills to make sense of your own learning experiences.
• You are expected to keep evidence of your engagement with the sources you used in your assessment (for your case study and reflective statement), including screenshots or digital records of your search through academic search engines, your literature notes and drafts of both assessment components. You are responsible for keeping this content safe and clearly organised. You will add some of this evidence as an appendix to your submission (see below), and you may be asked to show all this evidence to your lecturers following your submission.

Component One: Case Study

The case study is a research-based, student-led assignment. You are expected to collect reliable and relevant information about the digital business that you are studying, review the relevant literature and analyse the information you collected in the light of your literature review to produce an informative and coherent case study.

Selection of Case Study Organisation:

You can choose the organisation for your case study following the three rules:

• Your case study should be about a digital business organisation that was founded after 01 January 2009 (hence, not more than 15 years old).
• The digital business organisation you choose should operate in the industry you are assigned for teamwork in Week 1 (e.g., Fintech). You will be asked to work in teams and analyse a digital business sector. You will produce a collaborative literature review and analyse the business environment at the national or global level. You will present your collaborative work during the seminar in Week 6 and receive a formative mark (that does not affect the final module mark) and constructive feedback from your lecturer and peers in Week 7. The digital business that you will study individually will be from the same sector you studied as a team.
• We would like to encourage you to think about your case study organisation early on, and we would like to see a good variety of organisations being studied. For these reasons, we
  will ask you to indicate your chosen organisation by posting a short post on the module eLP (Blackboard).

You can change the organisation you are studying until the submission deadline, following the same three rules.

Case Study Content:

As mentioned above, there is a link between collaborative work, for which you will receive a formative mark and feedback, and individual work, for which you will receive a summative mark and feedback. This link is designed to enrich your learning experience and make sure that you will benefit from teamwork and experiential learning as well as individual and self-directed study. However, you should not submit industry-level teamwork output as your individual assessment. Instead, you are expected to conduct further research and initiate a dialogue between the industry and the business, as well as examine the relationships between the business environment and business plan, the academic literature, and the case study.

Section 1: Critical analysis of the entrepreneurial narrative 

• In this section, you develop a part of your case study that presents an overview of the company and a critical analysis of its emerging entrepreneurial narrative. This section is mandatory.
• A narrative is a description of connected events similar to history or a story. Furthermore, narratives often cover or provide insights into relevant contexts and actors, as well as significant changes in these elements. Narratives have an important role in how we make sense of complex phenomena. Simply put, an entrepreneurial narrative is a brief story about an entrepreneur or an entrepreneurial organisation. It can include how an organisation was founded and grew, its major milestones, and/or its distinctive features
• While presenting your critical analysis of the entrepreneurial narrative of the digital business you are studying, clearly distinguish between the way(s) the business, its founders and managers introduce, define and position the business, how other sources (e.g. in media, academic literature) describe this business and how you see this business based on the data and information you collected. Structure your section in a clear way to make these distinctions clear to the readers. If relevant, include comparisons and contrasts between these different aspects of the entrepreneurial narrative, or discuss the changes over time to enrich your critical analysis.
• You can choose any two out of the following four options to build Section 2 and Section 3. However, you need to make sure that the sections you write are coherent with each other and together, they produce key insights about innovation and entrepreneurship in digital businesses that you explain and justify in Section 4: Key Insights (see below).

Option 1: Review of relevant literature 

• In this option, you are expected to write a literature review that helps readers appreciate your case study, as well as why it is interesting and worth studying. The literature review can provide a theoretical perspective for analysing and making sense of the case. It can also inform readers on the nature of the industry, including major strategic considerations, opportunities and challenges, and/or societal considerations.
• A literature review involves careful engagement with academic literature (e.g., academic books and journal articles). You are expected to read academic publications, take notes, analyse and organise your notes, and produce a coherent, well-organised text that informs readers about the studies you have reviewed.
• Your literature review section would build upon and further develop the collaborative analyses you conducted in your team. For clarity, do not copy and paste your collaborative literature review. Instead, conduct further research to create a dialogue between the industry-level analysis you have done collectively and the organisation-level analysis that you carry out individually.

Option 2: Focused analysis of the macro environment 

• In this option, the section you write is an analysis of the macro business environment with a specific focus on the impact on the digital business you are studying. Like option 2, this section builds upon and further develops the collaborative analyses you conducted in your team. Macro environment typically refers to the global or national business environment.
• Please provide an overview of your findings in your teamwork about the business environment in the sector that you studied. This may have similarities (in terms of data, facts, and sources) with your team presentation, but the text should be your own individual work summarising the findings that you find important. Then, discuss the impact of the business environment on the digital business that you are studying. Provide further sources and evidence to justify your arguments.

Option 3: Focused analysis of the microenvironment 

• In this option, the section you write is an analysis of the micro business environment with a specific focus on the impact on the digital business you are studying. Like options 1 and 2, a section written following option 3 would build upon and further develop the collaborative analyses you conducted in your team. Microenvironment typically refers to the industry-level or sectoral business environment.
• Please provide an overview of your findings in your team about the business environment in the sector that you studied. This may have similarities (in terms of data, facts, and sources) with your team presentation, but the text should be your own individual work summarising the findings that you find important. Then, discuss the impact of the business environment on the digital business that you are studying. Provide further sources and evidence to justify your arguments.

Option 4: Description and critical assessment of the business model 

• In this option, the section you will develop will present a description and assessment of the business model of the digital business you are studying. Your description of the organisation’s business plan should clearly identify the value proposition of the company, and explain how it creates/plans to create this value for its customers. You can use Strategic Management tools such as Business Model Canvas to structure or support your discussion. Your critical assessment of the business plan can also include the societal impact of the business and/or its impact on the natural environment.
• Your assessment of the company’s business model should analyse and critically evaluate the strengths and limitations of the company’s business. This analysis should be informed by and ideally would build links to the literature review and business environment analysis you collaboratively produced in your teamwork and the sections you wrote individually.

SM9715 Section 4: Key Insights (15% of assessment mark)

Word Limit: 250 Words

The fourth and final section of your case study involves a short statement about the key insights of the case study. This section is mandatory.

For preparing this statement, please first consider what you have learned from this work. What do you expect readers to learn by reading your case study? What makes this case study interesting and worthwhile reading? Then, clearly state the key insights of your study.

Your statement can include references to academic literature based on team or individual literature review, or to other relevant and reliable sources. It needs to be clear and to the point.

Students are advised to read their case study once again after they write their key insight statement. Please consider whether you were able to develop these insights sufficiently in your case study and if you explained them clearly. If you are unsure about these questions, please have another look at your work and try to improve its content, analysis, structure and clarity. Reviewing and editing are important parts of producing academic outputs. When you are happy with your updated text, you will probably have improved the quality of your work and your chances of achieving a higher mark.

SM9715 Component Two: Reflective statements

For the second component of the assignment, you are asked to reflect on your learning experiences in the module in three sections. It corresponds to 30% of your assessment mark.

A good reflective statement is authentic as opposed to generic. Your reflective statement should be based on examples and evidence of your engagement with the module. Please be aware that fabricating evidence of engagement in this context can be considered academic misconduct, as it involves dishonesty related to the nature and content of your assignment.

Please allow yourself time to work in at least a few rounds of describing your specific learning experiences, using your analytical skills to make sense of these experiences, exploring relevant literature (e.g., on teamwork, learning from feedback), and structuring your text for clearly communicating these analyses and learning.

Section 1: Reflection on diverse learning experiences

Word Limit: 500 words
Percentage of assessment mark: 10%

The first section of your reflective statement focuses on your diverse learning experiences in this module.

By referring to specific examples (e.g., topics, activities) from lectures, seminars, the electronic learning platform (Blackboard), teamwork, and self-directed study, reflect on your learning and your professional development through your engagement in this module. Highlight your key
 
insights, topics that you are most interested in, as well as challenges and difficulties you have faced. Analyse how you could improve the outcomes if you started over and carried this learning forward in plans for the future.

You need to attach evidence of engagement with module activities as appendices to your reflective statement (please see below).

Section 2: Reflection on implementing successful teamwork

Word Limit: 500 words
Percentage of assessment mark: 10%

The second section of your reflective statement focuses on your teamwork in this module.

Based on your seminar outputs and further research through academic and practitioner literature, describe what successful teamwork means to you. Explain how you implemented successful teamwork practices in this module, and reflect on your experiences and outputs.

You need to attach evidence of engagement with module activities as appendices to your reflective statement (please see below).

Section 3: Reflection on learning from constructive feedback

Word Limit: 500 words
Percentage of assessment mark: 10%

The third and final section of your reflective statement focuses on the feedback you received from your lecturer and peer students, and how you incorporated this feedback to improve your individual case study.

Based on your seminar outputs and further research through academic and practitioner literature, discuss the role of constructive feedback in business and professional development. Explain how you implemented giving, receiving, and acting upon constructive feedback in this module.

You need to attach evidence of engagement with module activities as appendices to your reflective statement (please see below).
Appendices

You need to support your case study with evidence of engagement with academic literature as well as other reliable sources and datasets about the organisation you study. These include:

Screenshot or saved search results for academic search engines
Screenshots of the relevant pages of the 3 sources you used most
 
You need to support your reflective statements described above by attaching evidence of engagement with module activities as appendices to your reflective statement. This evidence and examples include but are not limited to:

• relevant short sections from your lecture/study notes
• screenshots of your contribution to electronic learning platform discussions
• selected seminar outputs (e.g., statement on successful teamwork),
• examples of your implementation of teamwork practices (e.g., minutes of meeting, shared objectives)
• your notes of the feedback your team received
• your formative mark on your team presentation

Please briefly explain in one or two sentences how each item in your appendix supports your reflection on module learning activities.

SM9715 Assessment Criteria