The most noteworthy startups and entrepreneurs of our day are known for bucking trends in business and leadership.
New ventures often position themselves in a way that forces their more established competitors to react and rethink the fundamentals of their original value proposition. The advantage of these new players often lies in a different management approach compared with large, more established companies. You can learn to think like these innovators too!
About the course
This course will help you understand the typical process entrepreneurs follow when launching a new venture, thereby helping you to adequately respond to upcoming threats through newly established companies.
You’ll explore an entrepreneur’s perspective in comparison to a manager in a large company; working through the various stages of the entrepreneurial process. You’ll profile the entrepreneur as a personality type, exploring whether an entrepreneurial mindset is something that people inherently possess or something that can be developed over time. You’ll gain insights into the generation of business ideas and how leaders manage to ensure that their ideas also represent a concrete business opportunity with commercial potential.
The course introduces the decision-making process of successful entrepreneurs and specifies how it differs from that of managers in large companies, identifying common patterns. It further introduces the lean start-up process to give you a concrete toolkit applied by successful entrepreneurs and specific pitfalls that typically occur at various stages of the start-up process - to help you avoid similar mistakes.
Besides the online lectures, participants will engage in a series of homework exercises and tutorials. Real-life case studies and examples from companies will be used to help participants better prepare for actual situations.
Check out: Top 5 Entrepreneurs with MBA Degrees
This course is part of the "Managing Technology & Innovation: How to deal with disruptive change" MicroMasters program designed to teach the critical skills needed to be successful in this exciting field. In order to qualify for the MicroMasters Credential, you will need to earn a Verified Certificate in each of the six courses of the RWTHx MicroMasters program.
What you will learn
By the end of this course, you will be able to:
- How entrepreneurs discover their business ideas and determine their commercial potential;
- How to distinguish entrepreneurial and managerial thought patterns;
- The specific skill set required to launch a new venture.
About the instructor
Prof. Dr. Malte Brettel is professor of Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship at RWTH Aachen University (Germany) and adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at WHU – Otto-Beisheim-School of Management (Germany). His areas of research interest include entrepreneurial management and development, entrepreneurial marketing, entrepreneurial finance, and innovation management. He has published several books as well as in many academic journals, such as in the Strategic Management Journal, the Journal of Product Innovation Management, the Journal of Business Venturing, and Marketing Letters, and has presented his research at leading international conferences. In addition to his academic career, Malte has co-founded several of his own companies, has served as managing director in these companies and is an active business angel. Professor Brettel is currently serving as a Vice-Rector for Industry Relations at RWTH Aachen University.
Duration: 6 weeks, 6-8 hours per week
Language: English
Instructors: Dr. Malte Brettel
Institution: RWTH Aachen University
