Entrepreneurship MBA

Entrepreneurs are often overwhelmed by the task of value creation, frustrated by unproductive meetings and misaligned teams, and involved in bold projects that blow up, leading to the disappointment in the failure of a good idea. Using value proposition design principles, you'll invent and improve value propositions, utilising tools for managing and renewing value propositions just as much as creating new ones. Learning to put the value proposition and business model to work to continuously invent and improve in ways that meet customer profiles, which are constantly evolving. In doing so, you'll better understand the patterns of value creation, leverage the experience and skills of your team, and avoid wasting time with ideas that won’t work. Resulting in being able to design, test and deliver products and services that customers want. You'll be supported throughout the process with clear and applicable content, along with access to advanced materials and knowledge, engaging online multimedia content, and practical, visual and enjoyable in-class activities.

Human Resource (HR) professionals and managers operate within increasingly complex and changing organisational and contextual circumstances in the public, private or third sectors. This is exacerbated by the variety of organisational types and size that contribute to national wealth creation in terms of the services and goods they provide and produce. This module provides you with understanding of market and business contexts in the operational, tactical, and strategic HR function, along with issues of the modern organisation. You'll examine the cultural, political, and social contexts that organisations operate within, both from an internal and external perspective. Further, you'll discover how economic forces affect and influence organisational practices, and their impact upon the HR function and its practices. You'll explore globalisation and how the changing demographics and social environments impact on organisational strategy and the HR function. Plus why ethical and democratic practices are needed to meet the changes of complex business and economic practices or the management of human resources in more dignified ways. Finally, you'll see how HR can contribute to and influence the strategic direction of organisational practice in the pursuit of welfare profit, as well as monetary profit.

Entrepreneurship is underpinned by a specific set of practices such as play, empathy, creation and experimentation. Yet, fundamental to the process of entrepreneurship is the practice of reflection. Whilst reflection is required in play, empathy, creation and experimentation, it is often overlooked, and given its importance in synthesising theory and practice, there is a need to focus specifically on this practice. This module is therefore designed to encourage you to understand the theoretical underpinnings of play, empathy, creation, experimentation, and reflection, by applying what you have learnt to your own experiences and experiences of an entrepreneurial nature. You'll examine the nature of reflective learning, noting its evolution, and analysing several reflective frameworks, before moving on to examine your entrepreneurial character, as well as, analyse entrepreneurial competencies required of successful entrepreneurs. You will engage in several exercises designed to develop your ability to practice reflection in an entrepreneurial context, addressing issues such as ‘the importance of intentionality in building and maintaining appropriate start-up culture’. You will finish by reflecting, using the theoretical and practical techniques developed during the module, on your own experience of the course, noting key outcomes, skill/competency development as well as, goals for the future – linking to core entrepreneurial concepts throughout.

Within this module you'll explore the fields of management and strategy, noting how strategic analysis and formulation contribute to an organisations performance. You'll explore practically relevant ideas and frameworks that facilitate strategy design and implementation, dealing with the craft of strategy, identifying and choosing superior competitive position, how to analyse strategic situations and how to create the organisational context to make the chosen strategy work. Practical and problem-oriented, this module places emphasis on the application of concepts and exploration of frameworks to assist you in analysing and gaining insight into competitive situations and strategic dilemmas.

Management decision making is a complex subject involving many variable factors. The primary objective of this module is to provide a conceptual and analytical framework for looking at organisations operating in capital, financial and operational markets. You'll explore the financial element contained in decisions and the techniques that may be used to assist informed management decisions. You start by considering the availability of financial information that may be relevant to decision making and whether this fits with the information you need to make the decision. This is further developed to the type of decision and differing requirements, leading to a more bespoke deliverable information set that meets the context of the decision. You'll gain an appreciation of core themes prevalent throughout financial management. The module also explores the financial techniques developed by financial and management accountants and how they may be used and applied. Finally, consideration is given to the relevance and weighting of the financial element in the decision making process and how qualitative issues may be incorporated in the overall decision. Strategic financial management issues covered include financial statement analysis, budget and performance management, raising finance (both short and long term), efficient allocation and utilisation of financial resources (including investment decisions), and mergers and acquisitions as well as foreign currency and interest rate risk management. Different organisations and sectors are covered to develop your knowledge and skills in finance and business analysis through practical tasks involving developing financial strategies, conducting a financial analysis, managing foreign currency risks and by using professional database such as FAME and Osiris, etc.

In this module, you'll undertake a project focused on understanding and supporting entrepreneurial action in practice. This could be an applied/engaged research project, an enterprise consultancy project which addresses an opportunity or challenge faced by an entrepreneurial organisation or researching and developing a new business proposition or idea. This project needs to provide the opportunity to understand, and manage how to move from opportunity to idea to action and could relate to your study or employability interests and/or current interests within the entrepreneurial management field. You'll work on key concepts/frameworks and issues within entrepreneurial management to stimulate thinking around trends and drivers creating opportunities for entrepreneurial management, as well as researching entrepreneurial opportunities and entrepreneurial action. In undertaking the project, you'll develop the case for why your chosen opportunity or idea is worthy of consideration as a project, particularly in terms of its value to the appropriate community of practice, develop a project plan, acquire the appropriate resources and internal and external support to develop and deliver the project, manage the project in terms of moving from idea to action and reflect on the development of the project against key themes related to being enterprising, the role of the individual in moving an idea from concept to action; and the influence of the entrepreneurial task environment. To ensure you're prepared for work in industry, you are required to pass all taught modules before undertaking a placement/consultancy.

In a competitive job market, understanding how the professional work place functions, along with well-developed employability skills, are key to a post graduate securing employment. The work placement gives you the opportunity to put into practice what would have been learned in the post graduate programme and with the insights of your practical experience in the field. During this module you will undertake a work-based learning internship with a company or organisation where you will be supported in developing effective professional practices through guidance in generic and specific employability skills and through developing independent reflective learning practices to enhance your continuing professional development in the context of your own working environment. The module aims to provide you with experience of work in a business environment including familiarisation with a professional work environment. This experience should take place in a business environment relevant to the course you are undertaking. The module will be underpinned by employability skills training, reflective assessment and support from academic tutors. You will expected to demonstrate your achievements within the workplace reflecting how you have enhanced your employability with reference to the university’s graduate employability capitals. To ensure you're prepared for work in industry, you are required to pass all taught modules before undertaking a placement.

Intrapreneurial Action is delivered alongside your two-trimester placement module and is your chance to complete a final major project informed by your real world management experience within your placement. As an intrapreneur you will need to be self-motivated, proactive and action-oriented whilst taking the initiative within a firm or incubator with the development of innovative products and services. To ensure you're prepared for work in industry, you are required to pass all taught modules before undertaking a placement.