Careers in entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is not a traditional graduate career path, instead it is an exciting field which takes place in a constantly evolving social and economic landscape. Not without its pitfalls, becoming a new business owner can be a perilous journey, but we attempt to equip you with a robust framework through your degree to enable you to take your product or idea to market, establish it and see it grow.

At Essex Business School we believe in sustainable entrepreneurship, so we are interested as much in where you and your product or ideas will be in 10 years as with where you are when you start out.

Common careers for entrepreneurship graduates include:

• Business or start-up owner
• Independent consultant
• Social entrepreneur
• Intrapreneur
• Business analyst
• Media
• Marketing

We maintain close links with the University of Essex Startups Team and to gain a perspective on how entrepreneurship is the alternative graduate career route, we recently spoke to the Head of Start-Up Services, Andy Mew on his view of entrepreneurship vs the traditional graduate scheme.

Essex Business School are focused on developing your entrepreneurial skills through our taught curriculum.

While our degrees in entrepreneurship embed far more skills than what is listed below (see the Essex Business School Careers page for more about embedded skills), here are the skills from our skills map that we have identified as being particularly useful for a career as an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurship skills

• Showing leadership
  Good leadership can often be linked to success so developing your leadership skills could allow you to succeed in launching your own business venture.
• Adaptability to changing circumstances
  The business climate is constantly changing and while this tends to be weathered collectively in an established business, being adaptable is a strong skill to have if you are facing a new and changing business landscape on your own.
• Showing initiative
  Entrepreneurs must show initiative in order to get their ideas off the ground, always looking for new ways to innovate and engage. We will nurture your ability to innovate and encourage you to show initiative wherever possible in your studies.
• Demonstrating motivation to succeed
  Having the motivation to succeed will reduce the risk of failure. And even if your first new venture is unsuccessful, having motivation to succeed can help you build your next enterprise. Motivation to succeed requires resilience and we are focused on delivering programmes which are designed to improve your resilience and encourage your motivation.
• Expressing business ideas
  The ability to express your business ideas through a variety of mediums is key for entrepreneurs as they navigate new markets, new sales partners and new investment opportunities. We will encourage you to develop your ideas in a coherent way while also teaching you presentation skills and how to use modern presentation platforms and technology.
• Argumentation skills
  While expressing your business ideas, you may find that skills in argumentation may help you to win over those more difficult clients and investors. Our curriculum embeds argumentation skills development through your assignments, essays and group work projects to encourage you to express your ideas concisely and while engaging your audience.
• Creative problem solving
  As an entrepreneur you will often have to find creative solutions to your problems in order to minimise spend, maximise impact and maximise profit. We will help you to look creatively at business scenarios to encourage you to develop problem solving skills which can be put to good use in your future ventures.
• Recognise rival conceptual ideas
  Understanding what your competitors are doing in the market is a key measure which will help you develop ways to differentiate your product and market it in a more targeted way. We will encourage you to recognise ideas and concepts and analyse their effectiveness.

Alternative skills

While many skills which are core to being a successful entrepreneur can be taught and developed in a classroom setting, there are many which cannot. It it important to point out that due to the level of risk associated with entrepreneurship, there are some skills which can only be developed out there in the "real-world".

These skills centre around:

• Resilience
• Competitiveness
• Creativity
• Quick thinking.

We can prepare you for scenarios which will develop these skills through the simulation games and group work tasks which take place on our taught programmes, however, the Essex Startups and University of Essex Careers Team will support you further in your alternative skills development.

Entrepreneurship is one of our five core subject groups and forms a large part of our research repertoire for the Strategy, Operations and Entrepreneurship group which is based at Essex Business School Southend.

This means that we offer further study in entrepreneurship at both Masters and Research degree (PhD) level.

If you are interested in studying entrepreneurship at a higher level or want to take your own research in new venture creation and small-medium enterprises (SMEs) to the next level, then you are welcome to apply for one of our postgraduate degrees in entrepreneurship:

Masters study

We offer three Masters degrees in entrepreneurship which allow you to specialise in either marketing, business or innovation:

• MSc International Business and Entrepreneurship
• MSc International Marketing and Entrepreneurship
• MSc Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Postgraduate research

Our Centre for Research on Entrepreneurship, Innovation,  Management and Internationalisation (REIMI) research centre focusses on research and training for entrepreneurship, innovation management and internationalisation. 

If your thesis explores issues such as; entrepreneurial disengagement, co-creation in social entrepreneurship, and cognitive entrepreneurship and over-optimism; then our supervisors would be interested in speaking with you about exploring it here at the REIMI research centre:

• PhD Entrepreneurship
• Integrated PhD Entrepreneurship