Entrepreneurship MSc

• New Venture Creation

  The aim of this module is to provide you with an understanding of the basic and essential issues in entrepreneurship and to provide some of the skills you will need to become an entrepreneur or to act entrepreneurially within existing organisational settings.

  After a general overview of the latest theoretical approach to entrepreneurship, you will explore the more practical issues in entrepreneurship, including identifying the opportunity, gathering the resources and managing the team.

  You will be invited to develop a business idea using the business model canvas, identify your ideal investors as well as learn how to pitch to them. The module will additionally focus on decisions regarding the management of a new venture.

  Using one of the latest tools, a business simulation, you will learn how to analyse and act in every-day business situations after setting up a startup.

• Product Innovation Management

  Innovation is at the heart of entrepreneurship. Innovation takes place in startup companies, but also in large, established corporations.

  While startups and big corporates share the ambition to be innovative, the conditions under which they develop new products and services are drastically different. Startup entrepreneurs often work with limited resources yet are free to make their own decisions. Corporate entrepreneurs, on the other hand, work in resource-rich settings but may be slowed by rules, hierarchy, and procedures.

  The aim of this module is to give you insight into the differences within the process of product and innovation management across startups and large corporate firms. You will discover what innovation is all about, why it matters, and what steps large organisations take to optimise their entrepreneurial activities.

  You will learn how to identify and select opportunities, generate concepts, design product protocols, evaluate concepts/projects, understand key aspects of product development and plan new product launches.

• Operational Feasibility: Creating a Supply Chain and Managing Finances

  To make their startup a success, entrepreneurs need to ensure that their ideas are feasible from an operational point of view. Even ideas that are immensely popular amongst end users may not become commercially successful if the entrepreneur does not manage to create an effective supply chain, and is therefore not able to produce and deliver the product or service, or if the costs of running the business exceed the revenues it generates.

  The aim of this module is to provide you with the tools necessary to analyse the operational feasibility of a startup. You will learn management accounting techniques and financial management techniques that inform the decisions entrepreneurs make regarding their working capital and budget.

  You will also be introduced to a number of operational management approaches that help entrepreneurs select suppliers, improves processes, and manage inventory.

• Marketing Fundamentals and Sales for Venture Success

  Entrepreneurs, like all businesspeople, want to make sales. Because their products tend to be new and innovative, entrepreneurs face specific challenges that marketers and salespeople responsible for more established products may not have.

  For instance, customers may have never encountered the type of product the entrepreneur is trying to sell. This means that entrepreneurs have to invest extra effort into creating a market for their innovations and finding out which customer groups to target. Marketing and sales are therefore critical activities for anyone involved in innovation and entrepreneurship.

  This module provides you with the concepts and tools used to market a new product offering and to demystify sales by introducing you to the fundamentals of selling and sales management. At the end of the term, you will understand that marketing and sales play a different role in entrepreneurial settings than they do in corporate settings, and realise that identifying, targeting, and convincing customers is a crucial part of entrepreneurship.

• New Venture Funding: From Seed Round to Exit

  Entrepreneurs who have the ambition to grow their ventures typically require external funding. Acquiring funding and determining whether to exit are both challenging processes that involve identifying the most suitable types of investment, convincing investors and finally negotiating and closing a deal.

  Many entrepreneurs go through this process several times, raising multiple rounds of funding. Eventually, they may exit their venture through a sale (M&A), an initial public offering (IPO) or a combination of the two.

  The aim of this module is to help you navigate the funding and exit environment. You will discover the various funding sources available, including early-stage angel investment, crowdfunding, and venture capital. You will also gain an understanding of methods used for valuing an entrepreneurial business and learn how to raise capital as well as how to manage the relationship with investors.

  Regarding exits, you will discuss the various exit options for start-up companies, including M&A deals and IPOs, and the relative advantages and different variations of each.

• High Growth Entrepreneurship

  Entrepreneurship is a multidisciplinary activity involving strategy, R&D, marketing and project management. In practice, entrepreneurs face a number of challenging issues simultaneously.

  Bringing new products, services and technology from a mind or a lab to the market is a crucial economic yet complex process.

  This case-based course will keep theory delivery in class to a minimum, but you will need to read a number of key papers.

  The module aims to provide you with knowledge and practical tools for the creation of high-growth new ventures, as opposed to lifestyle small businesses.

  You will learn how to change lives and “conquer the world” with innovative new products and services.

• People and Culture: Creating a Healthy Workplace

  Entrepreneurial ventures are turbulent working environments, characterised by constant change and radical uncertainty about the company’s future. These characteristics strongly impact the working lives of the people involved, both positively and negatively.

  Positively, because new ventures are an exciting place to work and to learn a lot in a short amount of time. But the impact may also be negative, given that pursuing an entrepreneurial career comes with financial and health-related risks for new venture founders as well as employees.

  In this module, you will be introduced to the challenges of working in a startup environment. You will take the perspective of both employees and founders. From an employee point of view, you will learn what to expect after applying for a new venture job. You will also, from the founder’s point of view, learn what can be done to create and maintain a healthy workplace, for yourself and for your employees.

• Purpose-driven Entrepreneurship

  Alongside the growth in resources for entrepreneurs and innovators interested in increasing clicks and profit, founders, investors and policy-makers have been exploring venture as a vehicle to achieve personally-meaningful goals.

  Studies suggest that as many as 58% of Gen Y - individuals born 1980-2000 - were willing to take a 15% pay cut to work for a firm that mirrors their values. 45% were willing to take a 15% pay cut to work for a firm that makes a social or environmental difference (Net Impact, 2012). Gen Z (born after 1996) have similar views to Gen Y, are even more cynical towards corporate actors and are stronger digital natives (Pew 2020; CBS News, 2020).

  This module has been designed to help you bridge the artificial division between the objectives of profit-oriented entrepreneurship, and the objectives that truly motivate innovators. Through practical and academic exercises, you will explore venture as an opportunity to create wide-spread societal change in a financially sustainable and even profitable way.

In your third term you'll study two compulsory modules and have the option to either complete a 5000 word General Research Project in term three or study a further three elective modules.

Compulsory modules

• The Entrepreneurial Advisor: Problem Solving for Early-stage Companies

  Within the MSc in Entrepreneurship, you will be able to participate in a consulting project. You will study an actual problem of a given new venture. You will receive the necessary information from the cooperating firms and organizations’ staff and you will cooperate with them throughout the project.

  Following analysis of the problem, you will prepare and present concrete and practical solution(s) to representatives of the firm or organization you have been working with.

  The main target of this module is to provide you with the opportunity to handle real-world problems and suggest operational solutions that can actually be implemented by the cooperating firms. To equip you for that task, this module provides a grounding in research methods.

  You will be able to use these skills to support your learning, substantiate your arguments and make assessments about the nature of the evidence you are using. The real-life nature of the module will give you the chance to develop close relationships with the cooperating companies and, thus, gain an appreciation of real business environments.

• Entrepreneurship Mentoring: Building your Professional Self

  City, University of London and Bayes Business School have an excellent reputation in promoting the employability of their students at all levels: undergraduate and postgraduate. We, at Bayes Entrepreneurship, commit to provide you with a unique module to support your professional growth within the entrepreneurship journey.

  The aim is to encourage personal and professional growth. We pair you up with an experienced practitioner who, as your mentor, can help you identify a business idea that suits you, develop that idea into a viable business project and, above all, make you fit to enter the business start-up world by working on your professional skills.

General Research Project

• General Research Project

  Any business needs methodologically sound and rigorous research. This module allows you to demonstrate, on an individual basis, your ability to integrate and apply concepts and techniques you have learned throughout the MSc in Entrepreneurship programme by undertaking an in-depth study of a topic (General Research Project) or an entrepreneurial opportunity of your choice (Business Plan).