Entrepreneurship can seem to be the province of the lone ranger. It’s simple to imagine an entrepreneur as striding out solo, purpose embedded in the deft tread of their boot, an idea in hand and the desire to see it through to its (hopefully well-renumerated) end.

No entrepreneur is, in fact, alone, though. Every entrepreneur is working within systems. As individuals, they are always networked, in the networks of companies, capital, society, environment. What they are creating, it is always for others: for customers, for society. This “embeddedness” is essential, though. The nodes of these networks are mentors, advisors, funders, investors, ecosystems, customers.

Many entrepreneurs understand this – increasingly so – and see that knowledge of the world and those who inhabit it is essential to a successful career as an entrepreneur.

For every “move fast and break things” type entrepreneur, there are many who take a more studied approach to the practice, who learn from the world and adapt their ideas to knowledge learned.

Business schools have seen this and have adapted their offerings in order to teach eager students in the ins and outs of entrepreneurship.

ESSEC Business School

ESSEC has put entrepreneurship in the limelight with what is on offer at its Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Seeing the world as one that is filled with rapid change and opportunity, ESSEC believes [CL1] that making students reactive to change, so that they can address distinctly modern challenges and be ever ready for the future, is an important part of rigorous entrepreneurial training.

By encouraging entrepreneurial minds, ESSEC is developing a new and especially quick and conscious kind of creative business leader.

ESSEC offers an essentially networked approach, centred upon:

• Harnessing cutting-edge technology for the betterment of humanity, as well as being ready for new technological developments.
• Being a part of a more equitable and inclusive economy.
• Centring democratic values.
• Ensuring that sustainability is at the forefront of entrepreneurship.

ESMT Berlin

Hopping over to Germany, we can see that ESMT Berlin, one of only two business schools in Germany to appear in every international ranking among the top business school rankings by the Financial Times and Bloomberg, and ranks highly as a centre of entrepreneurialism, offers a tempting masters in Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

By equipping their students with the skills and tools with which to spot trends, deal with a world in flux, and formulate new business ideas and drive innovation, ESMT aims to train their students to become the adaptable business leaders of the future.

With a focus on developing innovative ideas and getting a new business off the ground (the essential essence of entrepreneurship), the degree equips students with networked skills and the skills to build networks.

By interlacing storytelling and creativity with more hard-nosed practicalities like how to organise to maximise innovation and economics, the totality of entrepreneurship can be covered in the course.

emlyon Business School

emlyon prioritises sustainability in its master’s in Global Innovation & Entrepreneurship.

Understanding the hyper-connected way in which an entrepreneur must navigate our now-globalised world, emlyon puts inter-continental collaboration and innovation at the core of its entrepreneurial MSc.

The MSc has a triple focus, intertwining societal good with internationalism without forgetting the need for an entrepreneur to be recruitable, and thereby able to make a difference in the world.

By putting sustainability first, the programme forefronts the training of talented leaders who are able to adapt and develop innovative entrepreneurial solutions. By twinning this with teaching students how to leverage the opportunities of social entrepreneurialism, it ensures its graduates are fit and ready to positively impact humanity.

Tying the above aspects to an intercultural approach to education, emlyongraduates are able to work across the globe, making a difference in multiple social theatres, and in multicultural teams. This, alongside the MSc being focused on producing graduates which are highly employable, means that an entrepreneur who has studied the master’s in Global Innovation & Entrepreneurship is ready and able to make a real change, wherever they might end up.

Vlerick Business School

Vlerick is the top business school in Belgium according to the Financial Times, and its masters in Innovation and Entrepreneurship fully trains students in a dynamic blend of educative techniques and hands-on learning.

The rigorous course at Vlerick harnesses the tools and develops the creative mindset essential to any successful entrepreneur through:

• Interactive classes
• A pragmatic, multidisciplinary approach
• Insightful business simulations
• Real-life cases and challenges

From a “disruptor” trip to the beating electronic hearts of innovation of Silicon Valley and the Bay Area (at no extra cost), to an in-house start-up accelerator, an innovation challenge, and a project building a company, Vlerick offers every opportunity for a talented student to push themselves to achieve the greatest that they can, readying them for a truly stellar career as an entrepreneur.

Rotterdam School of Management (RSM), Erasmus University

RSM, one of Europe’s top-ranked business schools, produces an astonishing number of entrepreneurs. The graduates of its many advanced degrees on offer have put an increasing effort into developing entrepreneurial skills. The university recognised this, and entrepreneurship has emerged as a key focus.

A report from RSM’s department of Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship looked into the entrepreneurs of RSM. The increasing attention to entrepreneurship at RSM is in line with the university’s Erasmian value of “enterprising.”

Many RSM MBA alumni open their own business straight away after graduation, typically within a year of graduating. Many graduates are serial entrepreneurs, with 6.7 per cent of RSM MBA alumni having started more than one business.

By constantly inspiring and empowering students to adopt and train an entrepreneurial mindset, through the teaching of the core values and putting entrepreneurial competencies first, RSM is training the next generation of disruptors to create positive societal change.

For anyone who wants to create meaningful societal value while pursuing a career as an entrepreneur, RSM is the place to be.

Hult International Business School 

Hult’s Master’s in Entrepreneurship & Innovation centres skills that are essential to value creation, and teach future entrepreneurs how to devise, actualise, and deliver new business ideas with a no-nonsense and metrics-driven approach.

From start-ups to international enterprises, Hult covers it all. With a focus on spotting niche areas and developing the skills to take advantage of them and make a true impact, Hult is training cohorts of entrepreneurs who are also seers, by allowing them to gain skills which give them foresight into the future.

Hult also teaches how to apply design thinking techniques to explore unmet market needs (the world over: there are options to study in San Francisco, London, and Dubai) and devise business models with which one can quickly create viable and soon-successful businesses.

If you are looking for a hands-on programme that focuses on launching high-growth ventures that teaches through students taking on real-world business challenges that are integrated the entire program, then look no further than Hult.

Sheffield Business School, Sheffield Hallam University

In the industrial northern heartland of England, in the noble and picturesque city of Sheffield, Sheffield Business School offers a picaresque degree: with a BA (Honours) in Business Management and Enterprise, offering entrepreneurialism at an early stage.

If you want to get off to an early entrepreneurial start and learn how to engage with the world with an entrepreneurial mindset from the higher-education jump, the degree in Business Management and Enterprise will jump-start and supercharge the development an entrepreneurial state of mind, allowing any graduate to pitch, sell, and lead agile businesses from a young age onwards.

At the dynamic department, which focuses on contemporary growth sectors, students can gain advanced knowledge of digital skills, entrepreneurial strategy, business innovation, and learn how to ideate creative solutions to industry problems now and ahead. The degree also offers options to gain a real-world entrepreneurial experience alongside mentors and investors, as well as launch a venture through an award-winning enterprise centre.

BI Norwegian Business School 

If you are looking for more northernly climes in which to learn about entrepreneurship and innovation, look no further than BI Norwegian Business School, which offers an MSc in Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

BI won a prestigious award from United Nations Principle of Responsible Management Education for its efforts in making its campus sustainable. It aligned itself with UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and UN Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), and integrating them into its research, teaching, operations, and collaboration with stakeholders.

This means that when you are learning about sustainability at BI, you can live it too, and you know that the organisation which is teaching you has put its money where its mouth is.

The course teaches a number of entrepreneurial skills and mindsets on top of this. They tack all learning to a close dialogue with the environment, market, and customers, and implement new solutions and business areas.

They have a special and unique focus on risk and learning how to handle it and uncertainty – keys skills for any entrepreneur. It also teaches the skills necessary to quickly identify opportunities. Implementation and cooperation skills will also be key learning outcomes.

Is today’s entrepreneur still a lone ranger?

The image of the entrepreneur as a lone ranger – romantically ideating, perhaps on a wild plain, indigo-blue night skies above, until a world-changing idea comes and they are ready to return to society – is a powerful one. But it is plain to see, from the wealth of tailored courses offered by top business schools, that the truly modern entrepreneur wants to be and train within society, working among peers, learning lifelong lessons, all the better to affect society positively.

The modern entrepreneur wants to be connected: connected to people, ideas centres, places of innovation and learning, and thereby better able to affect the world. All of the innovations in the degrees discussed above reflect a desire in what the modern entrepreneur wants and needs.

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