Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Enterprise Development MSc
London, United Kingdom
DURATION
1 Years
LANGUAGES
English
PACE
Full time
APPLICATION DEADLINE
01 Jul 2025
EARLIEST START DATE
Jan 2025
TUITION FEES
GBP 19,000 / per year *
STUDY FORMAT
On-Campus
* international | UK: £16,500
Open Days at University of Westminster
Undergraduate Open Day 23 November 2024/ Postgraduate Online Open Day 26 February 2025
Introduction
On our exciting Master’s programme, you’ll experience first-hand what it’s like to innovate, solve real-life problems and come up with smart solutions. Inspired by serial entrepreneurs and our academic experts, you will cultivate your entrepreneurial mindset, improving your ability to identify viable business opportunities – whether you launch your own enterprise or support others to do so.
Individuals with an entrepreneurial spirit don’t always start up a new business, but they repeatedly come up with ideas that change the way we live and work, inspiring new products, services and activities that create jobs and spur economic growth. Their innovation, big picture outlook, willingness to take calculated risks and ability to build positive relationships make them an asset to any employer.
On this course, your journey begins in the pre-start-up phase, with the formation of ideas on a possible business venture, right through to potentially pitching your plan to prospective investors or raising money via crowdfunding campaigns. You will be mentored and coached throughout, developing the personal and professional skills needed to envision new products or services capable of attracting investment and then guide them to completion.
Practical in approach, you’ll learn through experience both as an individual and part of a team, participating in educational games, workshops, international and local business challenges and project-based assessments. These not only develop your awareness to detect business opportunities but also test your capacity to generate ideas and your resolve to progress projects – often in difficult and changing circumstances. As an example of the exciting activities students are exposed to: in 2018, we took students to Greece, visiting a wide range of different organisations, including a maritime institute, a local council working on a food bank project, a DIY family-owned chain store and a wine cooperative. In 2019, the international business challenge took place in Tallinn, Estonia, working with exciting firms such as an international accounting firm, an optician chain, packaging and logistic companies, as well as a major Estonian waste management and recycling business. Students were given a series of related tasks, such as coming up with a new business or product idea, revising a current business model and devising supply chain savings.
On our programme, you have plenty of opportunities to connect with London’s vibrant business start-up communities through our networks of entrepreneurs, accelerators, incubators and investors. On another project to put students' design thinking to the test, for example, they visited the nearby Church Street Regeneration Base and worked with a small business client to come up with ideas for development opportunities – anything from a digital estate agent to a pizza place.
On graduation, you’ll be ready (if you choose) to launch your start-up, which has led to past students launching successful ventures as diverse as a recipe and food blogger website, mealz.com, and the InterNeurs tv series on Amazon Prime.
Top reasons to study with us
- The University of Westminster has been the springboard for some highly successful entrepreneurs over the years – Jeffrey Hyman, Vivienne Westwood and Christopher Bailey, to name just a few
- Become business-ready through intensive practical experiences and input from seasoned entrepreneurs, which previously included a former MBA student who founded MyCognition, a digital training platform which enhances mental health and cognitive fitness
- Strong student community and chance to join the award-winning Westminster Entrepreneurship Society, one of the University’s most proactive societies
- Access to the University’s Fabrication Laboratory – or FabLab – where you can test different materials, build models and even prototypes of your product ideas
- We organise Pitch Days and Pop-Up Festivals to enable you to validate your ideas with real clients and investors
- Working field trips have previously included a trip to Greece to study the wine industry in Europe and London Venture Crawl of our local entrepreneurs and incubators
- Access to our extensive network of entrepreneurs: current and past students, successful alumni, The Entrepreneurial Society (TES), Westminster Business Consulting Ltd (WBC), The Big Innovation Centre (BIC), Building Global Innovators (BGI) and more
Why study this course?
- Pitch your ideas
Pitch your ideas to real investors and clients at our Pitch Days and Pop-up Festivals. - Global network of entrepreneurs
On successful completion of this course, you’ll gain access to our exclusive global network of entrepreneurs. - Strengthen business insight
Strengthen business insight through interaction with businesses and discussions about current market challenges.
Career Opportunities
Although all our activities are highly experiential, we also provide a sound grounding in current entrepreneurship and innovation theory. Having an entrepreneurial mindset, the ability to think outside the box and the skills to innovate will increase your attractiveness to a wide range of employers looking for opportunities to retain or develop a competitive advantage. You may choose to pursue a career in mid or senior-level management in-house or as a business consultant identifying and fixing problems. Alternatively, idea generation could lead to a role in new product development or research and development, while knowledge of how to successfully attract investments could be transferred to a career as a fundraiser.
Past students have gone on to create successful ventures ranging from a gym for women and a barber franchise, to a VR company, molecular cocktail company, an upmarket bar saloon and organic farm.
The University's Careers and Employability Service has built up a network of over 3,000 employers around the world, helping all our students explore and connect with exciting opportunities and careers.
- Build connections
Build connections with peers and future business leaders. - Learn the art of self-improvement
Learn the art of self-improvement and how to treat inevitable failure as an opportunity for reflection and betterment. - Develop your CQ
Develop your cultural intelligence – or ‘CQ’ – by studying alongside students and staff representing more than 100 nationalities.
Industry links
Our extensive industry links enable you to engage with start-up communities; we have access to a network of over 60 accelerators across London and Europe, as well as an investors’ network, whose members constantly engage with our business showcasing activities, such as pop-up fairs, future start-ups hackathons, charitable sales events, crowdfunding campaigns and social enterprising. You’ll interact with current and past students, successful alumni, The Entrepreneurial Society (TES), Westminster Business Consulting Ltd (WBC), The Big Innovation Centre (BIC) and Building Global Innovators (BGI), just to mention a few.
You’ll be taught by a team of experts who have collectively worked with regional development agencies, the European Commission and businesses across a diverse range of sectors, providing consultancy in strategy development, innovation and entrepreneurship for government and high-profile clients, including Shell International Oil Inc, UBS Swiss Bank, Médecins sans Frontieres and British Telecom. They have published several successful books including Entrepreneurial Marketing for SMEs, Making a Fortune – Learning from the Asian Phenomenon and The Millennial Millionaire, and how young entrepreneurs turn their dreams into business.
Job roles
Graduates of this course may go on to such roles as:
- Business consultant
- Business design lead
- Business development manager
- Business founder
- Fundraiser
- Management consultant
- Product manager
- Research and development manager
- Start-up entrepreneur
- Venture capital analyst
Graduate employers
Graduates from this course have found employment at organisations including:
- BCW Latin America
- Medical Management Systems Ltd
- Reward
- Spire Research and Consulting
- Subhadraa Exports
- Temperly
- Union Bank UK plc
Westminster Employability Award
Employers value graduates who have invested in their personal and professional development – and our Westminster Employability Award gives you the chance to formally document and demonstrate these activities and achievements.
The award is flexible and can be completed in your own time, comprising a set of core and optional extracurricular activities.
Activities might include gaining experience through a part-time job or placement, signing up for a University-run scheme – such as mentoring or teaching in a school – or completing online exercises.
Admissions
Curriculum
The course is designed to test and challenge you from the outset, giving you a broad understanding of entrepreneurship and innovation theory and business management while developing your capacity and capability to put these into practice. We’ll deliberately keep you out of your comfort zone – which is the only way you’ll succeed as an entrepreneur! In addition to critical business skills, we’ll help you develop analytical, creative thinking, communication and networking skills. Since none of our modules requires previous knowledge, this course is accessible to anyone with a desire to enhance their enterprise awareness and entrepreneurial capabilities. All modules studied are core.
Semester 1
Our focus from the start is on developing an effective entrepreneurial mindset, which includes the resilience to cope with rejection and see failure as an opportunity to improve. We’ll prepare you to scan markets for opportunities, gather relevant evidence and conduct qualitative/quantitative research and data analysis so you can make informed decisions about the value and legitimacy of different ideas. Practical support includes providing you with an overview of alternative funding sources and the tools to evaluate their suitability, whether you’re acting on your own, as part of a family business or on behalf of an employer.
Semester 2
The focus of the second semester is to build on earlier teaching and extend the knowledge you have gained into the applications of innovation in a digital economic context. To develop your knowledge and understanding of the digital economy, we may, for example, ask you to suggest ways to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) or virtual reality (VR) within a business. While developing a better understanding of innovation and technology, you will also learn the practicalities of developing a business plan and running a company in enterprise development, where you will be exposed to an understanding of financial management principles in the context of business development. You will also start working on your two-semesters-long entrepreneurial project, where you can explore any aspect of your business idea and, should you wish to do so, work on the launch of your start-up.
Modules
The following modules are indicative of what you will study in this course.
Core modules
- Analytics for business
- Creativity and innovation management
- Enterprise development
- Entrepreneurial marketing
- Entrepreneurial mindset and opportunities creation
- Entrepreneurial project
- Innovation and digital strategies
- Innovation through design thinking
Gallery
Program Tuition Fee
Scholarships and Funding
The University is dedicated to supporting ambitious and outstanding students and we offer a variety of scholarships to eligible undergraduate students, which cover all or part of your tuition fees.