Innovative, strategic, administrative, managerial and financial aspects of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial processes, opportunity recognition, preparation of business plans, forms of financing and venture capital. Management of a growing enterprise.
Entrepreneurial behaviour in established organizations. Organizational design challenges and options for new corporate ventures. Incentive systems and corporate culture to enable and stimulate entrepreneurial behavior. Corporate venture capital.
Lean startup management practices for testing and validating hypotheses. Integration of marketing and engineering functions. Challenges before and after product-market fit.
Disciplined and structured approach to innovation. Various innovation methods, types, requirements and barriers. Introduction to Design Thinking. Identification of needs, observation, problem definition, ideation, prototyping and testing.
Strategic perspective on generating and managing innovation. Sustaining vs disruptive innovation. Induced and autonomous process. S-curve models for technological innovations. Role of innnovation in organizational adaptation. Corporate R&D and interfaces to new product development; open innovation and absorptive capacity.
A conceptual framework and field experience on social entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship and social change. Interdisciplinary studies and applications related to social entrepreneurship. The examples of innovative solutions that drive social change in the business, not-for-profit organizations and public sector Business methods and strategies addressing social and environmental challenges in “sustainable and profitable ways”. Scaling of social impact, and social performance measurement. Social intrapreneurship. The characteristics of successful social enterprises and of entrepreneurs.
Contemporary topics and issues in entrepreneurship and innovation.
Structures for directing and controlling organizations. Rules and procedures for decision-making. Distribution of rights and responsibilities among stakeholders, including the board, managers, shareholders. Maximization of the long-term financial value of a corporation. Fair and rational management of stakeholder interests. Legal, moral and ethical issues in organizations.
Growth strategies and financial challenges in an entrepreneurial firm. Financing options such as venture capital, angel investors and private equity at each stage of an enterprise. Valuation methods for the privately owned firm. Strategic partnerships adopted by new ventures through rapid growth and harvest strategies. Financial distress at different stages of development. Real-life cases on critical aspects of a start-up. Decision-making in growth and financing strategies. Harvesting choices of a successful enterprise.
The role of research in solving managerial problems and making better decisions; various functions under business intelligence and their interrelated nature. Analysis and transformation of data for use in strategic decision making. Development of managerial skills in planning, conducting, communicating, reporting and evaluating research projects and technical skills in analyzing data. Use of research results to understand the constantly changing business world.
Cross-functional process of developing new products (services). The key points of contact with marketing, perations, finance, organizational policy, and strategic planning. Different stages of product development, from idea generation to market testing. Idea selection and the process of making them a reality. Best-practice strategies, frameworks, conceptual tools, and types of marketing research. Application of ideas and methods in the evaluation of a specific product concept.
Introduction to leadership and its core components. Review of main leadership styles. Discussion of leader-follower relations with a situational and cultural perspective. Analysis of outstanding leadership attributes of historical and current leaders. Building leadership skills through self-awareness and self-development. Case studies of outstanding leaders.
The unique attributes of e-commerce; management in the network economy; the role of e-commerce in creating value through networks and coopetition. Introduction to the , concepts, models, tools, and the practices of business transformation.
The understanding of the dynamics of change. The strategic importance of leading change. The frameworks for organizational change. Leaders and managers as change agents. The context and main actors in the change process. Major phases of change management. Practical skills to design, implement and evaluate effective change. The cases of successful change initiatives.
