Management and Entrepreneurship MSc

• Dr Abdelkader Aoufi

To provide the participant with an understanding of the Operations Management task and its contribution to organisational competitiveness.

An introduction to Managing Operations

The module covers:

• Strategic role of operations
• Process design and layout
• Managing the process experience
• Tools and techniques of process improvement
• Capacity management
• Inventory management, lean and agile operations
• Quality management and improvement
• People in operations
• Managing product and service innovation

On successful completion of this module you should be able to:

• Examine the different types of operations employed by organisations and their distinctive characteristics.
• Analyse the capabilities of different types of operation including the trade-offs involved.
• Critically assess and select the priorities for operational performance improvement and how to implement them.

• Dr Chia-Yu Kou-Barrett

Organisations are run by and for people, and the success or failure of an organisation depends on the people in that organisation. 

It is rarely an absence of planning that causes organisational difficulties; rather it is the failure of management in understanding and managing complex personal and interpersonal systems that can lead to significant problems.

Similarly an acute and critical understanding of these dynamic relationships can lead to profound and enduring success and benefit for the individual, the team, the organisation and wider society.

In this module students will be introduced to various aspects of people and organisations.  This module combines models, theories and ideas from organisational behaviour, psychology, and sociology in order to provide students with a basic understanding in recognising, understanding and utilising what has been termed the "human factor" in organisations; including ways of conceptualising organisations and how people behave within them.  We shall consider the impact of the external environment; and address notions of organisational change.

This module is necessarily an introduction; further suggestions of reading and of consequent activities will be provided. 

It may also be that students will wish to undertake a project in this area; several of the faculty involved will be pleased to discuss this with you.

• Culture
• Development
• Diversity
• Emotional Intelligence
• Individual and Organisational Change
• Individual differences
• Introduction to People and Organisations
• Leadership
• Learning
• Motivation
• Negotiation, influence & persuasion
• Performance Management
• Personality
• Politics
• Self Awareness
• Stress, Resilience, Well-being
• The Individual and the Team
• Values

On successful completion of this module a student should be able to:

1. Understand and apply a number of different ways of conceptualising people in organisations, including culture, ethics, well-being, diversity, politics, management, performance and change
2. Assess the importance of relationships at work, group dynamics, effective teams and leadership in achieving effectiveness
3. Critically engage with various relevant models, theories and ideas in order to enhance personal capability, including identification of gaps in knowledge, skills, and competence, linking to insights regarding one’s personal and professional development agenda, based on sound data and experience

• Dr Mikko Arevuo

Strategic Management is concerned with the direction and scope of the organisation.  This involves determining the purpose of the organisation, establishing objectives and formulating strategies to achieve the objectives. It predominantly explores how an organisation positions itself with regard to its changing environment, and in particular its competitors, in order to gain and sustain competitive advantage. This means that strategic management considers how an organisation’s internal resources and capabilities can be developed to meet the changing demands of customers, in such a way as to achieve the expectations and objectives of its stakeholders. 

An introduction to the Strategic Management module

The module begins by focusing on strategy at the strategic business unit level. It is orientated around five key questions

1) where to compete?

2) how to gain competitive advantage?

3) what capabilities are required?

4) what capabilities do we have?

5) how do we change?

The module then explores corporate level strategy and the issue of strategy implementation and change. Throughout the module a range of tools and techniques for strategic analysis and choice will be introduced.

On successful completion of this module you should be able to:

• Describe the key questions and associated challenges to be addressed in formulating an organisation’s competitive and corporate-level strategies.
• Appreciate that to sustain competitive advantage an organisation must harness its internal resources and capabilities and react appropriately to changes in its external environment.
• Appraise and differentiate between corporate, competitive (business unit) and functional strategies.
• Critically apply a range of tools and techniques to illuminate the key questions of competitive strategy and corporate strategy

• Dr Matthias Nnadi

The aim of the Accounting and Finance module is to introduce a number of traditional and contemporary accounting approaches that will increase the visibility of financial information and support management decision making.

• Interpretation of financial statements;
• Exploring the relationship between accounting information, management decision making, financial strategies, and financial performance;
• Applying traditional and contemporary accounting tools and techniques, which can be applied to support business management decisions;
• Exploring the many cost trade-offs between business processes (Make v Buy).

On successful completion of this module a student should be able to:

1. To judge the effect of decisions, transactions and events on financial performance;
2. To create simple sets of accounts from basic information.
3. To understand the main variables affecting working capital management;
4. To interpret financial statements to support decision making, planning and control;
5. To apply an appropriate costing approaches to solve a range of business issues;
6. To apply a number of financial tools and techniques to appraise alternative capital investment opportunities;
7. To use financial information to make informed management decisions

• Dr Andrea Moro

This module focuses on financing issues faced small business ventures/entrepreneurial firms. It explores the issues from the perspective of the entrepreneur, the investors and the providers of debt finance. The module aims to provide students with awareness and understanding of the risk incurred by investing in an entrepreneurial firms (entrepreneurs, providers of equity and providers of debt). It also allows for a thorough examination and evaluation of alternative financing strategies that small/entrepreneurial ventures can pursue by exploring different financial tools. The students will also explore aspects of deal negotiations and deal structures.

• Overview of the entrepreneurial venture and its peculiarities.
• Identifying and valuing entrepreneurial opportunities and related risk.
• Equity funding (entrepreneur’s finance, bootstrap finance, business angels, venture capital, etc.).
• Debt finance (trade credit, short term finance, factoring, long term finance, leasing)
• Innovative finance (Crowdfunding, ICOs)
• Growth and exit strategies.

On successful completion of this module a student should be able to:

1. Critically discuss the peculiarities of entrepreneurial ventures and how they affect entrepreneurs’, investors’ and banks’ decision about financing entrepreneurial ventures.
2. Appreciate the critical role that financing plays in new venture creation (in terms of start-up survival and firm’s growth).
3. Critically apply the various sources of financing available to small business ventures.
4. Formulate a deal structure for an entrepreneurial venture.
5. Critically assess different investment harvesting alternatives.

Business growth is a natural extension of the MSc in Management and Entrepreneurship’s initial focus on business start-up, and provides an integrative overview of the life-cycle of the entrepreneurial venture.  It explores the transition from an informal, emergent organisational model to a sustainable, professionally-managed business which creates independent value for founder and other stakeholders.  It thus links to theory and practice in the key areas of marketing, finance and human resource management. 

The aim of this module is to familiarise students with the life-cycle of the entrepreneurial business post start-up through to exit via sale or succession.  There will be a focus on high-growth, high-potential entrepreneurial businesses.

At each stage of development, a different set of challenges confront the founder[s] and the senior team leading the business. This module will explore these critical stages and the associated challenges that must be successfully addressed if the business is to achieve its full potential.

Students will emerge with a clearer idea of whether they would like to make a career in this business environment and, in particular, with high-growth businesses, or indeed aspire to found their own high-growth business.

• The life-cycle and key stages of the entrepreneurial business
• Identifying and overcoming barriers to growth
• Building the foundations for growth – organisational structure
• Building product portfolios for growth
• Building entrepreneurial teams and relevant cultures
• Achieving the entrepreneur’s personal goals

On successful completion of this module you should be able to:

1. Deploy a set of analytical tools and techniques for describing and analysing key challenges for the business and how these are overcome.
2. Differentiate high growth businesses – from lifestyle and income-replacement self-employment.
3. Define the transition points through which a growth business progresses to acquire value that is independent of the founding individual[s], and be able to quantify and articulate this through a range of valuation models.
4. Evaluate the critical management decisions that need to be taken during challenging moments in the growth of a business.

• Dr Sergey Portyanko

The aim of the course is to provide students with knowledge and skills relevant for the management of new ventures across the entrepreneurial life cycle. The course will also act to prepare students who want to undertake an internship for a new venture as part of their thesis on the MSc in Management.

Watch an introduction to the Entrepreneurship module.

• Entrepreneurial Process
• Idea Generation and Opportunity Recognition
• Intellectual Property Protection
• Industry and Market Analysis
• Strategy and Business Model Analysis
• Entrepreneur and Entrepreneurial Team
• Resourcing and Finance: preparing financial projections and funding the venture
• Managing venture’s evolution and growth
• Business Planning
• The Entrepreneurial Profile and Self-Assessment

On successful completion of this module you should be able to:

1. Identify and evaluate entrepreneurial opportunities
2. Explain how to plan, manage and resource (early stage) entrepreneurial businesses
3. Articulate the importance of business models and be able to develop an appropriate business model for an entrepreneurial venture
4. Assess the likely financial needs of the venture in preparation for fundraising
5. Evaluate, research, write and present business plans/feasibility studies utilising key relevant frameworks and concepts

• Professor Leon Williams

This module introduces disruptive innovation and sets out why it is a distinctive form of innovation. The core theory underpinning the topic is introduced along with the rationale for adopting a contrasting approach to that used for managing incremental innovation. The module presents a range of practical tools to support organisations in building strategic competences that enable them to recognise, create or react to disruptive innovation. The module reviews how disruptive innovation applies, individually or in combination, to technology, processes, services and business models.

A core element of the module will be a simulation of an innovation project. The project’s aim will be to develop an innovative product that has potential to be disruptive to the existing market. The simulation will involve team-based activities that equip you with practical tools and hands-on experience. The assessment requires a critical reflection on the experience of using various techniques for managing disruptive innovation within the simulation.

During the module the knowledge and skills required for the simulation will be introduced through a combination of lectures, cases studies and other activities. These will introduce both theoretical elements of the module but also practical techniques that can then be applied within the simulation.

• Identifying and analysing recent, relevant literature that informs an understanding of an organisational capability in innovation, for example through the individual capabilities supporting the Pentathlon framework.
• Understand the nature of disruptive Innovation: what is it, and why is it necessary?
• Understanding how coordinated development effort across a combination of goods, technologies, services and business models can result in disruptive innovation.
• Use and reflect on specific approaches and techniques that underpin an innovation capability, for example:
  1. Understanding, classifying and prioritising customer needs using the Kano model.
  2. Planning technology and is development trajectories using techniques such as environmental analysis, technology roadmapping, and other foresight techniques.
  3. Analysis and design of services using techniques such as service blueprints.
  4. Analysis and design of business models using techniques such as the business model canvas.
  5. Prioritisation of projects within the innovation pipeline.
  6. Management of the new product development process.
  7. Evaluation of an innovation in terms of its disruptive potential.

On successful completion of this module you should be able to:

1. Examine the key capabilities, and their interrelationships, that underpin an organisational capability in innovation.
2. Critically apply and review the theoretical underpinning of innovation management to the process through which innovative technologies, services and business models are developed.
3. Explain how disruptive innovation might be distinct from other forms of innovation and test whether a specific innovation has disruptive qualities.
4. Analyse how an organisation’s approach to the innovation process influences the types of innovation created.
5. Evaluate the use of a range of techniques that enable disruptive elements of an innovation to be analysed and communicated in terms of the contribution of technological, process and business model innovation.
6. Reflect on the experience of planning an innovation project and critically review the extent to which the new product has disruptive potential.

This module will also develop a potential foundation for a dissertation. A dissertation could draw on the module content to inform the development of an innovation that has been proposed or is currently in development. A dissertation could focus on various aspects of a disruptive innovation, for example, to analyse and understand the relationship between organisational environment and innovation type (disruptive vs. incremental) or to evaluate a set of potential scenarios for development of an innovation. 

• Dr Richard Adams

The aim of this module is to familiarise students with the concepts of social enterprise and intrapreneurism, and enable them to compare and contrast these phenomena with “non-traditional” entrepreneurship. Both business models overlap extensively with what is regarded as traditional entrepreneurship, but have distinctively different features: while being profit-or surplus-making, their aims typically embrace social outcomes and purposes, and their distribution or sharing of value created is frequently closely linked to these declared values.

Students will be introduced to the history and evolution of non-mainstream modes of entrepreneurship and will develop their understanding of how social entrepreneurs/social intrapreneurs and intrapreneurs create and operate enterprises/intrapreneurial activities in different environments. They will see how such enterprises fit within the spectrum of profit and not for profit entities, and how these are regarded by policy-makers and other stakeholders.

Students will emerge with a clearer idea of whether they would like to make a career in this business environment or, indeed, aspire to found their own social enterprise or pursue a corporate intrapreneurial initiative.

• What social enterprise is: the history and evolution of social enterprise/entrepreneurship.
• How social entrepreneurs compare with “mainstream” entrepreneurs.
• Legal, commercial and financial structures of social enterprises.
• Enabling environment for social intrapreneurism.
• Compare and contrast: social vs non-social intrapreneurism.
• Measuring the impact of social enterprise and intrapraneurism of all types.
• Social enterprise and social intrapreneurism: how they are viewed by policy-makers and other key stakeholders.
• Social enterprise, sustainable business and sustainable value creation.

On successful completion of this module a student should be able to:

1. Describe, analyse and categorise the drivers and motives of social entrepreneurs/social intrapreneurs and intrapeneurs.
2. Differentiate and delineate the salient features which distinguish these modes of entrepreneurial behaviour from other “mainstream” forms.
3. Define the factors, both environmental and intrinsic, which promote or hinder the development of both a free-standing social enterprise and social intrapreneurism within the corporation,
4. Apply the measures of impact used to define the effectiveness of social enterprises.
5. Explain and appraise the agenda of policy-makers regarding the role, purpose and economic value of social entrepreneurship

• Dr Stephanie Hussels

Family businesses make numerous, critical contributions to the economy and to family well-being both in terms of money income and such intangibles as time, flexibility, control, and personal expertise - if they work. When they don't, family businesses can be difficult to manage, painful experiences at best. The path to success for any business can follow many routes. Family businesses add the complexities of family life to business challenges, expanding the range of issues, personalities, needs and potential solutions for every decision. Knowing something about family types, communication patterns, managerial styles and the amount of support members can expect from their families may be as important to beginning entrepreneurs as knowing how to reach a market or managing cash flow.

The course addresses aspects of managing an established family business, on a day-to-day basis and planning for succession to the next generation: values, life cycles, growth strategies, succession, conflict resolution, governance and cultural change. Family business issues of new companies are a small part of the course content; because there are other modules in the MSc Entrepreneurship and Management programme that concern entrepreneurship and small business management, this module will enable students to run their family businesses in an entrepreneurial manner.

• Family business: Definition, nature, and significance
• Life cycles of a family business
• Growth strategies of family businesses: How to build family business champions
• Succession planning and next generation management
• Conflict resolution
• Managing culture and change in family business
• Governance in Family Business: Corporate, family and ownership governance

On successful completion of this module you should be able to:

1. Demonstrate their understanding and effectiveness of family firms (either in their own family’s business or someone else’s) and apply strategic planning skills in dealing with the issues of growth and regeneration of the family business.
2. Identify the characteristics that differentiate family business from other businesses.
3. Examine and critically analyse the life cycles of family businesses from the perspective of business, family and ownership and develop governance mechanisms for each.
4. Learn methods to enhance communication ability and conflict resolution with family business owners, managers, and family members, including relatives.

• Dr Oksana Koryak

Corporate entrepreneurship (CE) is a practice of entrepreneurship in established organisations. The module is about (re)configuring existing organisations such that they are able to (continue to) identify, explore and exploit new growth opportunities.

Corporate entrepreneurship typically refers to a processes, practices and structures whereby an individual or a group of individuals, in association with an established company, (a) create a new organisation (i.e. engage in corporate venturing) or (b) instigate renewal or innovation within the current organisation.

Engaging into corporate entrepreneurship, be it through corporate venturing or less formalised efforts of identifying new growth opportunities through innovation, strategic renewal or business model reconstruction is key to organisational survival and growth. However, entrepreneurial efforts within existing organisations pose a set of nontrivial management challenges such as:

1. Would an existing organisation benefit from relying on bold, risk-taking individuals?
2. Is entrepreneurial behaviour consistent with the planned and controlled strategic direction of a company? To which extend would the shareholders be willing to let the management engage heavily into entrepreneurial initiatives?
3. How would established market presence and corporate reputation be affected by the performance of the new initiatives?
4. How can a promising corporate entrepreneurship initiative be executed effectively in the presence:
1. the entrepreneurial team’s limited formal power within the organisation;
2. the initiative’s needed to achieve legitimacy; and
3. the need to overcome internal inertia and resistance to change.

The aim of this module is to familiarise students with the concepts of corporate entrepreneurship and the way they can be applied to develop entrepreneurial management capabilities within existing organisations. We will examine the organisational architecture – i.e. leadership, culture, structure and strategies - needed to encourage creativity, innovation and the development of sustainable competitive advantage in larger, existing organisations.

We will focus on the skills and resources needed to promote and manage corporate entrepreneurship process which includes opportunity recognition, establishing internal and external legitimacy of the business concept, managing the implementation process and more broadly, achieving organisational ambidexterity (i.e. the ability to manage existing operations and generate new business effectively).

• The “Entrepreneurial DNA”
• Configuring Organisational architecture for entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial orientation
• Structuring the company for entrepreneurship
• Developing entrepreneurial culture
• Fostering creativity and innovation within organisations
• Leading an entrepreneurial organisation
• Corporate strategy and entrepreneurship
• Organising Corporate Entrepreneurship efforts – corporate venturing and strategic entrepreneurship
• Business Model Innovation as a vehicle for corporate entrepreneurship

On successful completion of this module a student should be able to:

1. Assess the entrepreneurial orientation of an organisation and evaluate the company’s ability to deal with the opportunities and threats it faces.
2. Elaborate what is required to become an entrepreneurial leader and explain how entrepreneurial leadership can be developed and leveraged in existing organisations.
3. Appraise and recommend how an organisational architecture can be configured within an existing organisation to secure a sustainable competitive advantage.
4. Compare and contrast different forms of corporate entrepreneurship.
5. Develop a way how an existing firm can organise its corporate entrepreneurship efforts directed at fostering and sustaining innovation, initiating strategic renewal.

This module presents a strategic perspective of marketing, whereby understanding of the needs and wants of customers is used to guide and direct the organisation. It focuses on the input of the marketing perspective across all functions hence prepares students for general management responsibilities. No prior knowledge of the subject is assumed.

The content demonstrates how the organisation adapts to continually create and deliver value to customers and shareholders. The primary means of operationalising this Cranfield’s Strategic Marketing framework: a roadmap, and set of theories / frameworks that students learn and integrate into a broader perspective. These divide into the following topics:

• Market sensing – understanding markets, customers and competitors
• Market design – growth, innovation and value propositions (brands)
• Aligning to customers – strategic customer management, channels
• Responding to customers – advertising, digital media, sales, measurement

On completing this module, the following outcomes will have been achieved and students will be able to:

1. Evaluate the organisation-wide implications of being a market-oriented and customer-led organisation and its impact on management and business performance.
2. Select and critically reflect on appropriate marketing theories, tools and frameworks which are applied to business opportunities and problems.
3. Compose a written strategic marketing plan for a senior management audience.