The MSc Entrepreneurship and Innovation programme is designed to stimulate students to acquire an entrepreneurial mindset. The programme enables students to learn how to identify new innovative or entrepreneurial opportunities, assess their potential, identify possible investors and clients, and bring ideas to the market. They learn how to develop and maximize managerial and leadership skills, including managing multi-disciplinary teams in innovative contexts. Students put theory into practice in the programme, either through creating their own business venture, or through working on their innovative project within a business in their chosen track.

The MSc Entrepreneurship and Innovation programme offers a broad range of pathways to meet diverse students’ interests and needs: Business, Circular Economy, Creative Technology, Enterprise Governance, Innovation and Succession, FinTech, Smart Cities and Technology Transfer Management.

Students will learn to manage innovative ventures in many possible forms, including start-ups, corporate intrapreneurship projects, and within business units. Students will be provided with the infrastructure, resources and guidance to establish new ventures/business proposals whilst following an academic trajectory path built around business development. This combination of theory and industry-based practice, typified by the industry-oriented Masters’ degrees of XJTLU Entrepreneur College (Taicang), offers you a unique educational experience with the potential to develop today’s modern skillsets in a real-life context.

• The Business pathway, developed jointly with the School of Intelligent Finance and Business within XJTLU Entrepreneur College (Taicang), is the most generic pathway, providing students with a solid base for entrepreneurial activities. This pathway offers a competitive edge for business graduates who focus on management and leadership within entrepreneurialism. This pathway is for students with more developed business ideas who wish to add to the specialist skillsets and expand their business and professional networks whilst taking their career to the next step.
• The Circular Economy pathway, developed jointly with the School of Intelligent Finance and Business within XJTLU Entrepreneur College (Taicang), built around a regenerative economic system, provides students with a solid base for entrepreneurial activities. Ideas, issues and priorities have opportunities to develop business ideas. Students will be delivering benefits such as reducing pressure on the environment, improving the security of raw material supply, increasing competitiveness, encouraging innovation and boosting economic growth.
• The Creative Technology pathway, developed jointly with the Academy of Film and Creative Technology, focuses on cultural technologies, digital product design, digital media, or entertainment. These are software-based, electronic and data-driven solutions in today’s digital age. This pathway relates to digital technologies, people’s experiences, and their practices with mobile, immersive, ubiquitous, and pervasive technologies, helping students become independent practitioners, entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs capable of anticipating changes and communicating strategically with stakeholders.
• The Enterprise Governance, Innovation and Succession pathway, developed jointly with the Hexie Academy, focuses on a range of key issues that enterprises are facing such as continuous entrepreneurship, transformation and innovation, governance upgrade, and succession. This pathway enables students to understand how to use interdisciplinary knowledge and approaches from complexity science, as well as history and culture, to address these issues and challenges through Syntegrative Education.
  It also helps students apply their theoretical knowledge to the practical business environment. This programme aims to enhance students’ skills to allow them to deal with current and future issues of entrepreneurship, governance, innovation and succession. Additionally, the programme helps students to nurture their HeXie (harmonious) mindset to navigate a world full of uncertainty, ambiguity, complexity, and changeability. We welcome you to join us if you are looking for a wonderful learning journey that can provide you with a wide range of knowledge and understanding, as well as the expertise and unique skills.
• The FinTech pathway, developed jointly with International Business School Suzhou (IBSS), provides opportunities for students to study and utilise applications of newly developed digital and technological advancements in products and services in the banking and financial service industry. It may include software, algorithms, and applications for computer- and mobile-based tools. The FinTech pathway provides suitable students with the modules needed to provide a base for entrepreneurial activities within this area. It does not focus on creating software or algorithms but rather on the application, either in business or as part of students’ ventures.
• The Smart Cities pathway, developed jointly with the Department of Urban Planning and Design, provides students with the knowledge to promote sustainable development and intelligently address growing urbanisation challenges. The focus is on opportunities that a technologically modern urban area creates to develop assets, resources and services, improving city operations smartly.
• The Technology Transfer Management pathway, developed jointly with the XJTLU-JITRI Academy of Industrial Technology, highlights the process of achieving scientific and technological research impact in the marketplace and to the broader society. It also provides suitable students with an essential source of innovative creation and an integral part of business development.

Note: For students from this programme who need degree verifications from the Ministry of Education of China, the degree verification only indicates the degree title "MSc Entrepreneurship and Innovation", without the pathway title.

Tracks

Students study on one of the two tracks within each of the pathways mentioned above.

• The entrepreneur track on each pathway takes students through establishing their own start-up business.
• The intrapreneur track on each pathway takes students to work on a real business case for the second part of their study, using an inductive learning approach.

WHY SHOULD I STUDY ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND INNOVATION AT XJTLU?

• Develop entrepreneurial competencies and mindset;
• Improve management skills and entrepreneurship capabilities for leading and directing innovative ventures;
• Get academic support from highly-experienced academic staff with a variety of entrepreneurial and business competence from the University, including the Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Hub within XJTLU Entrepreneur College (Taicang);
• Receive professional support and advice from hand-picked industry mentors to guide you through your plans for how to be an entrepreneur/intrapreneur;
• Earn a University of Liverpool degree that is recognised by the Chinese Ministry of Education and worldwide.

By the time you graduate from the MSc Entrepreneurship and Innovation programme, you will have gained:

• advanced awareness of current theories, trends and techniques in the theory, practice and research of Entrepreneurship and Innovation;
• the ability to compete for opportunities and transform them into viable concepts and business ideas;
• the skills to plan, manage and resource entrepreneurial business activities;
• the capability to evaluate, research, write and present business plans/feasibility studies utilising key relevant frameworks and concepts;
• an understanding of the importance of ethical and social responsibility as well as ethical and social sustainability from a regulatory perspective in entrepreneurialism;
• experience in managing the next stage of your career in your chosen track; and
• an entrepreneurial mindset.

Dr Abraham Moskovicz, Pathway Director of Business

" With a competitive Business pathway, this industry-oriented programme focuses on management and leadership within entrepreneurialism. It welcomes you who have developed business ideas and wish to add to the specialist skillsets and expand your ventures and professional networks better and before any potential competitor."

Dr Abraham Moskovicz, Pathway Director of Circular Economy

" With a competitive Circular Economy pathway, this industry-oriented programme focuses on innovation, entrepreneurialism and sustainability in a regenerative economic system. It enables you to deliver innovation in boosting economic growth."

Dr Gabriele Aroni, Pathway Director of Creative Technology

" With a competitive Creative Technology pathway, this industry-oriented programme welcomes you, experts and independent practitioners in creative technology, to pursue the synergies of innovation, digital creativity and lifelong learning to adapt to iteration and changes."

Dr Peng Liu, Pathway Director of Enterprise Governance, Innovation and Succession

" With a competitive Enterprise Governance, Innovation and Succession pathway, this industry-oriented programme cultivates future family business successors, business partners and professional managers. It provides you with a critical understanding of enterprise governance, innovation and succession. It also prepares you to lead and engage enterprises to sustain continued prosperity and growth."

Dr Jia Zhai, Pathway Director of FinTech

" With a competitive FinTech pathway, this industry-oriented programme provides you with practical knowledge and experience in the FinTech sector. It blends the relevant hard and soft knowledge and skills, focusing not only on technical programming but also on incorporating elements of digital assets, ethics, regulations, financial governance and innovation. It is perfect for you if you are looking for a postgraduate FinTech programme which develops an understanding of how technology is reshaping the financial industry, creating revenue, strengthening security and adding values. It also enables you to put theory into practice using cutting-edge technologies in the financial workplace."

Dr Juhyun Lee, Pathway Director of Smart Cities

" With a competitive Smart Cities pathway, this industry-oriented programme provides you with a precious chance to explore entrepreneurial and innovation opportunities and solutions within Smart Cities. You will gain knowledge on assets, resources and services to improve the city operations smartly while developing essential modern skillsets in a real-life context to be a future leader."

Dr Wei Zhuang, Pathway Director of Technology Transfer Management

" With a competitive Technology Transfer Management pathway, this industry-oriented programme enables you to develop a generous professional knowledge system, helps you get familiar with the concepts of investment and financing and intellectual property, and teaches you to identify the feasibility and maturity of a technology and how to industrialise it successfully. As a good technology transfer manager, achieving others is also achieving yourself."