The Entrepreneurship specialization within the Masters in Business Studies offers students who are interested in entrepreneurship as a possible career option or as an academic discipline, a list of Masters level (10 ec) courses on entrepreneurship and the possibility to write their Masters thesis on entrepreneurship as a follow-up on one of these courses.

The entrepreneurship courses offered are:

• International Entrepreneurship in which entrepreneurship as a universal, industry and country independent process is discussed.
• Entrepreneurial Finance in which the topics in venture capital and financing new innovative ventures are covered.
• Cultural Entrepreneurship in which entrepreneurship in the creative, cultural industries stand central.

Students choosing two masters courses in the Entrepreneurship accent and writing the masters thesis on entrepreneurship can earn up to 40 ec out of the required 60 ec for the Masters in Business Studies.
In addition, Entrepreneurship specialization students can choose courses from other business studies disciplines like Strategy, Marketing and Information Management, or courses offered by the School of Economics (eg. Economics of Entrepreneurship).

For more information contact:
T. Vinig, coordinator, Business Studies Entrepreneurship Accent, g.t.vinig@uva.nl , 020-5254173.

International Entrepreneurship

The course is given as a series of lectures, discussion seminars based on research papers, student’s presentations based on case studies (eg. This year students presented their case study of TomTom together with Peter-Frans Pauwels one of the founders of TomTom), guest presentations from entrepreneurs and investors (eg. Fritz Goldschmeding Founder and former CEO & Presidents of Randstas, Fokke de Jong Founder, CEO of SuiteSupply, Victor Muller Co-founder and CEO of Spyker, Bert Twalfhoven Founder, CEO of Indivers N.V., Sandeep Kapadia, co-founder and General Partner with the VC firm, Prime Technology Group), and in-class video presentation (eg. Thomas Friedman on his book The World is Flat).

Example of Masters thesis topics are: Entrepreneurship and Globalization, (done in The Netherlands, Portugal, Malaysia), How do Venture Capitalists Screen Business Plan (done in The Netherlands, The US), Corporate Entrepreneurship and Leadership, Exit Routes for Entrepreneurs and VC’s in a Changing Business Cycle in the US and Europe, The Entrepreneurial City, What so entrepreneurs learn from failure – multiple cases study approach.

Many international exchange students are taking this course. In past years we had students from Mexico, China, US, Dominican Republic, Spain, Sweden, Israel and more.

Entrepreneurial Finance

Its objective is to present the theory and practice of the financing of new entrepreneurial firms. Special attention will be devoted to understanding the motivations of the different players (mainly financiers, entrepreneur) and how to reconcile their interests.

Students will learn how to value new ventures. In particular, the course will focus on differences in valuation methods with traditional corporate finance views of large companies. Students will also get a better understanding of various source of finance for start-up firms, where special attention will be devoted to private equity investors (business angels and venture capital funds) and how deals are structured between them and entrepreneurs to mitigate well-known agency problems inherent to young companies. Many of the theoretical aspects will take a principal-agent view of this relationship, and the discussion will be largely backed by recent developments in the theoretical and empirical literature on entrepreneurial corporate finance. We will also use many case studies.

Cultural Entrepreneurship

As part of the track on Cultural Entrepreneurship there are ongoing research projects concerning the music industry and the film industry, in which students can be involved in the course of thesis-projects.

Recent thesis subjects range from collaboration between majors and independent labels in music, impact of private foundations compared with public support to entrepreneurship in cultural industries, economics of film festivals, project-based ventures in television, to critical success factors in the careers of modern painters.

There are contacts with various organizations in the cultural industries, ranging from the Concertgebouw to Noorderslag music festival, from Megacharts (organization compiling the top40 data) to the NPS (public radio & television).