Master of Science in Entrepreneurship & Innovation

The Master of Science in Entrepreneurship and Innovation (MSEI) program is designed to offer students with business, technical or other non-business degrees a comprehensive education that prepares them to launch entrepreneurial ventures or new business ventures in large organizations.

The program is structured as a 16-24 month, 30-unit program for both business and non-business majors alike and utilizes primarily face-to-face courses but will also integrate hybrid instruction where appropriate. Through coursework and experiential learning activities, students will be exposed to the key concepts of entrepreneurship including creativity and ideation, evaluation and screening of business concepts, business model formulation, startup models and the entrepreneurial process, team formation, marshaling resources, planning techniques, and launch strategies.

Increasingly, students are seeking specialized graduate programs rather than the traditional Masters in Business Administration (MBA), according to the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). Whereas by design a generalist MBA has breadth requirements and discourages focus on a particular discipline, specialized master's programs are designed to allow and encourage such focus, and such specialized degrees are increasingly offered at business schools around the country. The MSEI proposed program taps into that trend, offering students an immersive experience focused on the entrepreneurship specialization. According to the Kauffman Foundation, entrepreneurship is on the rise in the US and a recent survey of the field by Inc. magazine noted that the U.S. now has 27 million entrepreneurs. This is significant in that it encompasses nearly a fifth of all working adults.

Success Stories:

Rachel Jimenez, CSUSB Entrepreneurship Alumnus - https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/02/how-to-balance-full-time-work-and-a-side-hustle-rachel-jimenez.html

Student Growth opportunities & Dedicated Events: https://entre.csusb.edu/content/students

What Our Student Say: https://entre.csusb.edu/content/student-perspectives

A program designed for individuals with a growth mindset that aspires to create an innovative and scalable venture that has the potential for a successful exit in 5-7 years.

Master of Science in Entrepreneurship and Innovation (MSEI) Courses

Required Courses (21 units)

• ADMN 6020 - Advanced Managerial Communications
• ENTR 5410 - Commercializing Entrepreneurial Innovation
• ENTR 5450 - Resources for the Entrepreneur
• ENTR 6210 - Entrepreneurship and New Ventures
• ENTR 6230 - Exploring Entrepreneurial Opportunities
• MGMT 6850 - Strategic Management
• TA 5141 - Entrepreneurial Improvisation and Creativity
• ENTR 6980 - Reflective Essay (0 units)

Entrepreneurship Elective (3 units)

Chose one (1) from the following:

• ENTR 5470 - Managing a Growing Business
• ENTR 5490 - Launching the Entrepreneurial Venture
• ENTR 5550 - Entrepreneurship in Action: Corporate, Social and Family Business Approaches

Custom Elective (3 units)

Chose one (1) from the following or any 6000-level course chosen from the graduate business core in consultation with the MSEI faculty advisor:

• MGMT 6550 - Leadership as Art and Science
• MKTG 6400 - Advanced Marketing Research

Culminating Experience (3 units)

• ENTR 6961 - Entrepreneurial Immersion 1 (2 units)
• ENTR 6962 - Entrepreneurial Immersion 2 (1 unit)

Total Units - 30

The Princeton Review, Graduate Entrepreneurship program rankings for 2023, CSUSB School of Entrepreneurship ranks at #44, out of the Top 50 for 2023 and #8 in the West.

Additional Awards & Rankings: https://entre.csusb.edu/content/awards-and-rankings

Program Learning Outcomes

Entrepreneurship is essential:

• The capacity to perceive and act upon opportunities in the environment.
• The pursuit of opportunity regardless of resources controlled.
• The creation of something from nothing.

Because of the coursework in the MSEI program, students will be able to:

1. Communicate persuasively and effectively, both verbally and in writing, in a wide variety of formats and contexts.
2. Frame problems, think creatively, and exhibit the presence necessary to form actionable solutions.
3. Define, discuss and apply the key principles of entrepreneurship, the entrepreneurial process, and the entrepreneurial mindset.
4. Identify and differentiate the key startup and business models available to the entrepreneur, and assess the appropriate context for their use in the startup environment.
5. Identify the inherent risk involved in the startup venture and deploy proven startup models and guerrilla approaches that can mitigate such risk.
6. Identify the key tangible and intangible resources available to the entrepreneur, construct resource plans and startup valuation, forecast funding and operating requirements, and design and formulate a founding team.
7. Effectively explore the feasibility of potential business opportunities using a variety of exploratory and hypothesis testing methods (e.g. lean startup, business road test). This will entail an innate understanding of the role of the customer, product development and testing, and the ability to construct, perform and assess input from customer interviews.
8. Define and navigate the process of commercializing innovation in the startup and large organization environment. Understand and navigate the barriers to technology commercialization, assess the intellectual property, and construct basic proposals for licensing.
9. Recognize the role of strategy in the formulation of business ventures and strategic principles can be applied throughout the life cycle of a venture.

Student Learning Outcomes

Students in the MSEI program will acquire and demonstrate specific competencies in the areas of:

1. Recognizing Opportunity: the capacity to perceive changed conditions or overlooked possibilities in the environment that represent potential sources of profit or return to a venture.
2. Assessing Opportunity: ability to evaluate the content structure of opportunities to accurately determine their relative attractiveness.
3. Vision and communicating the vision/seeing the Future: the ability to conceive an image of a future organizational state and to articulate that image in a manner that empowers followers to enact it.
4. Creative Problem solving: the ability to relate previously unrelated objects or variables to produce novel and appropriate or useful outcomes.
5. Resource Leveraging/Bootstrapping: skills at accessing resources one does not necessarily own or control to accomplish personal ends.
6. Mitigating and Managing Risk: the taking of actions that reduce the probability of a risk occurring or reduce the potential impact if the risk were to occur.
7. Planning/Modeling When Nothing Exists: the capacity to take advantage of one’s surroundings, employ unconventional, low-cost tactics not recognized by others, and do more with less.
8. Innovation---Value-driven New Product and Concept Development: capabilities of developing new products, services, and/or business models that generate revenues exceeding their costs and produce sufficient user benefits to bring about a fair return.