Course Overview
Course summary
On our exciting Master’s programme, you’ll experience first-hand what it’s like to innovate, solving real-life problems and coming 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, 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 simulations, workshops, 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.
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. Student projects include putting design thinking to the test, for example, student teams visited the nearby Church Street Regeneration Base and worked with small business clients to come up 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, InterNeurs tv series on Amazon Prime, the VR platform for luxury brands, Emperia, the sustainability validation service and The PR Genius.
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
- Recent alumni include successful business such as Emperia (VR) and Net 0 (Software to reduce emissions).
- Strong student community and chance to join the award-winning Westminster Entrepreneurship Society, one of the University’s most proactive societies
- We organise Pitch Days to enable you to validate your ideas with real clients and investors
- Access to our extensive network of entrepreneurs: current and past students, successful alumni, The Entrepreneurial Society (TES), Westminster Business Consultants (WBC), The Big Innovation Centre (BIC), Building Global Innovators (BGI) and more
Course structure
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 require 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 financials in a 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 on this course.
Core modules
You will learn how to identify data needs and how to collect and examine raw data to support organisational decision-making in order to implement the evidence-based decision-making process.
You will explore creativity and creative thinking through applied and online exercises, both individually and in teams. The module will show you the importance of team engagement and individuals’ contribution to successful team creativity and innovation within an organisation.
You will grow familiar with the concept of entrepreneurial management audit and the importance of the lean business start-up model. You will learn about the role of business model and learning organisation in maintaining “entrepreneurial environment” in a business setting.
Enterprises are often started by entrepreneurs, people who have a particular attitude towards life, an adventurous spirit and little fear of taking risks in their business ventures. However, not all ventures are managed by entrepreneurs as often, more structured and more risk averse people (the owner- managers) run the business. Given that in enterprises most of the decisions are in the hands of the business owner and big structure constraints his/her decision making, although much more flexible and swifter than in larger organisations. This module will introduce the main aspects of marketing within a start-up context and will enable the student to gain an understanding of the nature of small enterprises and their marketing practices. It is important for students to gain an understanding of the small and medium sized business world. Additionally, the student will learn how entrepreneurial marketing concepts can contribute to add value to ventures marketing activity.
You will explore the transformative power of entrepreneurial creative abilities and the concept of opportunity identification and exploitation.
You will have the opportunity to experience the real-life process of launching an entrepreneurial activity through independent and guided study.
The module aims to develop your understanding of how new opportunities are offered for business innovation in emerging and existing sectors and the strategic challenges in exploiting these emerging opportunities.
You will learn the systematic approach to innovation and problem-solving and to the concepts of design thinking.
For more details on course structure, modules, teaching and assessment Download the programme specification (PDF).
To request an accessible version please email [email protected]
Get your copy of the University of Westminster prospectus and browse the range of courses on offer.
Contact us for general course enquiries:
+44 (0)20 7911 5000 EXT 65511
(Mon–Fri, 10am–4pm BST)
Live chat with us
(Mon–Fri, 10am–4pm BST)
Open evenings
Join us at an open evening online or on campus. Get a feel for student life at the University of Westminster and talk to course leaders and our support teams.
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Careers
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 skills to innovate will increase your attractiveness to a wide range of employers looking for opportunities to retain or develop 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, PR services, 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’ – 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 Consultants (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 across a diverse range of sectors including food and hospitality, tourism and automobiles. They have published several successful books including: Entrepreneurial Marketing for SMEs, Making a Fortune – Learning from the Asian Phenomenon and The Millennial Millionaire, how young entrepreneurs turn their dreams into business.
Job roles
Graduates of this course may go on to such roles such 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
- VC funding
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, allowing you to choose from a set of extracurricular activities.
Activities might include gaining experience through a part-time job or placement, signing up to a University-run scheme – such as mentoring or teaching in a school – or completing online exercises.
Read more about our Westminster Employability Award.
Course Leader
Supin Hussain
Senior Lecturer
Having previously lectured at Queen Mary University and Birkbeck College, Supin has 15 years’ experience in Higher Education (HE) within the fields of marketing, strategy and entrepreneurship. She now teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students as a Senior Lecturer at Westminster Business School, focusing on modules in marketing, creativity and innovation, strategy, digital technology and entrepreneurship.
A decade spent in professional practice prior to Supin’s academic career involved various marketing roles within the small electrical, healthcare, recruitment and motor car industries. She is also a trained Team Coach, using approaches that stem from Finland’s Team Academy.
Leveraging her experiences in industry and coaching, Supin’s research interests lie in team learning, predominantly within HE and with a focus on entrepreneurial learning. Specifically, she is interested in developing methods of practice-based learning – actual ‘doing’ – in today’s style of team learning and ways of learning. Her role also involves delivering and developing team learning and developing theoretical underpinnings within an ever-changing ecosystem.
I have always had a keen interest in small business management given experience from a family business. Having consulted for a number of small start-ups/scaling-up businesses, I have gradually moved from my main focus of marketing towards entrepreneurship and team learning – with the knowledge of marketing I feel it was a natural progression. I have been enjoying and supporting all our student entrepreneurs ever since.
Course Team
Teaching and assessment
Your learning experience is designed to develop the capabilities needed by the graduate labour market, integrating practice-based learning and projects alongside academic learning and business theory.
To assist the learning experience, we provide reading lists, lecture and seminar materials in advance via Blackboard, our virtual learning environment. Lectures are recorded using specialist software and similar tools to make sure you can really listen to what is said in class and don’t miss a thing.
How you’ll be taught
Through a variety of teaching methods – all innovative and coaching-based. Our distinctive teaching methods is based on team teaching and learning.
Group work is a core component of the programme, which allows you to deepen relationships with classmates, get a more thorough understanding of subjects by interacting with people from diverse professional and cultural backgrounds, and gain real-life skills you can put into practice in the workplace. For example, in January 2020, as part of the Entrepreneurial Mindset module, to learn about social entrepreneurship students were tasked to raise funds for a charity of their choice. Working in teams, they had to liaise with a charity and host an event to raise money, which ranged from a Bollywood Dance class to stress relieving yoga and an art workshop. They raised £7,100 for Save the Children, Water Aid, The Childhood Trust and Cancer Research UK.
You’ll gain experience out in the field, visiting real-life businesses, to gain a better insight into how you can develop workable solutions to improve performance or extend products and services.
We organise pitch days with investors and try to invite current practitioners to share current challenges and experiences: past talks within the School have covered current topics around VR and AI start-ups and sustainable investment banking funds.
In the following graph you'll find examples of how study time has been distributed in the past (data from the academic year 2022/23). Changes to division of study time may be made in response to feedback and in accordance with our terms and conditions. Learning typically falls into three broad categories:
- Scheduled hours: examples include lectures, seminars, practical classes, workshops
- Placement: placement hours normally include placement opportunities, but may also include live projects or virtual activity involving employers
- Independent study: non-scheduled time in which students are expected to study independently. This may include preparation for scheduled sessions, follow-up work, wider reading or practice, completion of assessment tasks, or revision
How you’ll be assessed
On the programme we do not have exams, but we use a wide range of engaging assessment methods, including simulations, business challenges, investigating briefs, portfolios of evidence, group pitches and video presentations. The course involves a variety of assessment methods which call upon the student to propose solutions to real case studies both in groups, alone and under short time limits in the case of the ‘hackathons’.
Presentations and essays are also included in the course content, but it is the focus on practical resolution to real problems and the encouragement of analytical skills and creativity that make this an attractive course. For example, we encourage a reflective learning journey report following the consultancy or work project undertaken in the placement organisation.
In the following graph you'll find an indication of what you can expect (data from the academic year 2022/23). Changes to assessment weights may be made in response to feedback and in accordance with our terms and conditions. Assessments typically fall into two broad categories:
- Practical: examples include presentations, podcasts, blogs
- Coursework: examples include essays, in-class tests, portfolios, dissertation
Why study this course?
Pitch your ideas
Pitch your ideas to real investors and clients.
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.
Entry Requirements
A minimum of a lower second class honours degree (2:2).
Exceptionally, Practitioners with significant work experience (3 years) in any sector or industry will be considered for admissions. Entrepreneurial experience may include all sort of activities that indicate opportunity seeking activity, which may include (and not limited to) opportunities identification (e.g., generating an idea for a potential business, or interest for a future as a business owner), organisation and coordination of resources (e.g., running a project that involves teams and resources coordination like a Church/Association project or a fundraising activity or a campaign to raise awareness about some issues within a community), and not necessarily running a business.
If your first language is not English, you should have an IELTS 6.5 with at least 6.5 in writing and no element below 6.0.
Applicants are required to submit one reference.
View more information about our entry requirements and the application process.
A minimum of a lower second class honours degree (2:2).
Exceptionally, Practitioners with significant work experience (3 years) in any sector or industry will be considered for admissions. Entrepreneurial experience may include all sort of activities that indicate opportunity seeking activity, which may include (and not limited to) opportunities identification (e.g., generating an idea for a potential business, or interest for a future as a business owner), organisation and coordination of resources (e.g., running a project that involves teams and resources coordination like a Church/Association project or a fundraising activity or a campaign to raise awareness about some issues within a community), and not necessarily running a business.
If your first language is not English, you should have an IELTS 6.5 with at least 6.5 in writing and no element below 6.0.
Applicants are required to submit one reference.
More information
University preparation courses
Our partner college, Kaplan International College London, offers Pre-Master’s courses that may help you gain a place on a postgraduate degree at Westminster.
To find out more, visit University preparation courses.
What our students say
Sahl Haris Chawla
Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Enterprise Development MSc - 2023
I loved that, by the end of your course, you have a business plan ready that has been reviewed and assessed by qualified and experienced academic professors who are extremely supportive throughout the journey. I highly recommend this course if you want to see an idea turn into a reality.
Student work
Student work includes 48-hour hackathons and business challenges, which include solving real business problems that range from creativity and innovation to marketing and strategic operations for real clients with real problems. Past examples include Aviro, Ilana, and community-based Westminster Wheels, as well as numerous charities.
Learn new skills
Become a responsible business leader
Understand the importance of ethics, shared value, sustainability and collaboration as a responsible business leader.
Professional software
Enhance your digital literacy, learning how to collect and use data from Bloomberg, DataStream and Fame.
Improve your problem-solving
Improve your problem-solving and business diagnostic skills to better understand and tackle business issues.
Fees and Funding
UK tuition fee: £16,500 (Price per academic year)
When you have enrolled with us, your annual tuition fees will remain the same throughout your studies with us. We do not increase your tuition fees each year.
Find out how we set our tuition fees.
Paying your fees
If you don't wish to pay the whole amount of your fees at once, you may be able to pay by instalments. This opportunity is available if you have a personal tuition fee liability of £2,000 or more and if you are self-funded or funded by the Student Loans Company.
Find out more about paying your fees.
Alumni discount
This course is eligible for an alumni discount. Find out if you are eligible and how to apply by visiting our Alumni discounts page.
Funding
There is a range of funding available that may help you fund your studies, including Student Finance England (SFE).
Find out more about postgraduate student funding options.
Scholarships
The University is dedicated to supporting ambitious and outstanding students and we offer a variety of scholarships to eligible postgraduate students.
Find out if you qualify for one of our scholarships.
International tuition fee: £19,000 (Price per academic year)
When you have enrolled with us, your annual tuition fees will remain the same throughout your studies with us. We do not increase your tuition fees each year.
Find out how we set our tuition fees.
Paying your fees
If you don't wish to pay the whole amount of your fees at once, you may be able to pay by instalments. This opportunity is available if you have a personal tuition fee liability of £2,000 or more and if you are self-funded or funded by the Student Loans Company.
Find out more about paying your fees.
Alumni discount
This course is eligible for an alumni discount. Find out if you are eligible and how to apply by visiting our Alumni discounts page.
Funding
There are a number of funding schemes available to help you fund your studies with us.
Find out more about funding for international students.
Scholarships
The University is dedicated to supporting ambitious and outstanding students and we offer a variety of scholarships to eligible postgraduate students.
Find out if you qualify for one of our scholarships.
What our students say
Sahl Haris Chawla
Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Enterprise Development MSc - 2023
I loved that, by the end of your course, you have a business plan ready that has been reviewed and assessed by qualified and experienced academic professors who are extremely supportive throughout the journey. I highly recommend this course if you want to see an idea turn into a reality.
Westminster Business School blog
Read our blog and get an insight into life and studies at Westminster Business School.
Facilities
The Learning Platform
Lecture theatres
Library
Bloomberg Financial Market Suite
Digital Marketing Lab
Meeting spaces
Cafe
Supporting you
Our Student Hub is where you’ll find out about the services and support we offer, helping you get the best out of your time with us.
- Study support — workshops, 1-2-1 support and online resources to help improve your academic and research skills
- Personal tutors — support you in fulfilling your academic and personal potential
- Student advice team — provide specialist advice on a range of issues including funding, benefits and visas
- Extra-curricular activities — volunteering opportunities, sports and fitness activities, student events and more
Course Location
Our Marylebone Campus has benefitted from a multi-million pound refurbishment resulting in new workshops, digital studios and development of the Marylebone Library. The campus is home to Westminster Business School and our award-winning Architecture, Planning and Tourism courses. For more details, visit our Marylebone Campus page.
Westminster Business School
Based in the heart of London's political, media and financial services, Westminster Business School has excellent industry links and a strong commitment to social enterprise.
Our courses are accredited by professional bodies including the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB), Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).
Our practical teaching relates learning to the real world, and we develop graduates who are ready to respond to contemporary business challenges.
Contact us
Call our dedicated team on:
+44 (0)20 7911 5000 ext 65511
Opening hours (GMT): 10am–4pm Monday to Friday
Opening hours (GMT): 10am–4pm Monday to Friday
More information
Your Westminster
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