What it’s about:
The entrepreneurial studies major teaches you how to recognize, evaluate, and respond to new business opportunities. You learn to use management skills to set up and run your own business or franchise, or to apply your creativity and energy to increase the productivity of an existing business.
What the study of this major is like:
Entrepreneurial studies is the liberal arts major of business school. To be successful as an entrepreneurial major, you need to be able to see the “big picture” and still remain focused enough to take action. You can apply entrepreneurial thinking to almost any field of study-from liberal arts and social sciences to mathematics and physics-and to a variety of careers. If you have a passion for, say, theater, you can use what you learn in entrepreneurial studies to help you create, grow, and manage a dram company. An engineer with an entrepreneurial studies degree can develop innovation that are not just new, but that people will want and buy. Doctors and lawyers who work on their own can use entrepreneurial skills to make their private practices develop and thrive. Business executives can use their entrepreneurial skills to capitalize on opportunities from within their companies. This major prepares you not only for a career but also for life.
Almost all entrepreneurship programs require you to complete a core of business courses. Most programs also offer courses in developing a business plan and in entrepreneurial finance. Good programs blend academic exercises such as case studies and class discussion with hands-on experience creating an enterprise or working with an existing organization. They also provide a variety of specialty paths that may include social entrepreneurship, management of a growing business, and family-controlled enterprises.
The challenges you will face depend on the rigor of the program you attend. Students in strong programs often have to deal with real-world experiences that are outside the bounds of traditional academic activities-for instance, handling professional vendors or actual customers. In general, entrepreneurship can be emotionally demanding because you must make a personal commitment, to your stakeholders (investors, employees, your family, society), that you will create value of improve social conditions. And you don’t commit to try-you commit to do.
The most obvious difference among programs is how much the sponsoring school or college focuses on entrepreneurship. The programs generally evolve as follows: first, handful of entrepreneurs and management professors teach a course or two on new-venture creation; then a division of professors teach a number of concentrations in the discipline (such as new ventures or financing) with little interaction with other departments; finally, the college (or school of business) reshapes it curriculum, teaching business in the context of entrepreneurship.
Career options and trends:
Business owner/new-venture creator*; investment banker; consultant*; sales and marketing professional*; venture capitalist; operations manager.
Entrepreneurship remains strong in both good and band economic periods. When the economy is strong, entrepreneurs find an abundance of opportunity, and companies and consumers have more money to spend on the emerging products and services that entrepreneurs provide. When the economy is weak and jobs are scarce, entrepreneurs will spend their time creating a job rather than looking for one.
Source: CollegeBoard 2012 Book of Majors
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