Prospectus

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Corporate Entrepreneurship (minor Science, Business, and Innovation)

Course
2023-2024

Admission requirements

3rd year Bachelor students

Description

In the quest for sustainable competitive advantage, companies are increasingly finding out that lower costs, higher quality, and better customer service are not sufficient. In times of ongoing globalization and tremendous market and technological change, they must be faster, more agile, and more innovative in order to obtain their competitive edge. In short, companies must be more entrepreneurial.

Entrepreneurial processes are not limited to the domain of independent new ventures, but increasingly also recognized as essential to the long-term viability of already existing organizations. Corporate entrepreneurship (CE) involves the study of entrepreneurial processes and principles as applied within established organizations. It denotes the ability to facilitate and to stimulate the positive features of small firms into larger, established organizations. CE characterizes a new management philosophy that promotes strategic flexibility, agility, creativity, and continuous innovation with the aim of transforming routine employees into intrapreneurs.

In this course we will explore the practices and challenges presented to established companies engaging in CE. It reviews how companies can rely on strategic innovation to continuously renew themselves (i.e. their products or services), their markets, or their industries. As the link between innovation, entrepreneurship and strategic growth has become centrally proclaimed and emphasized, this course is further designed to provide you with a basic understanding of how innovative activities of a company are managed. Companies must do so, because new products based on innovation in a Schumpeterian sense are essential for increased profitability and growth.

We will deal with both the theoretical and practical meaning of CE. Several theoretical perspectives will be discussed, emphasizing both the necessary antecedents of CE and the constraints working against such entrepreneurial behavior. On a practical side, the course will provide you with tools to formulate corporate strategies and to create organizational structures that foster CE. The course is characterized by a multidisciplinary approach as it combines insights from economics, entrepreneurship research, strategic management, psychology, and sociology.

Course objectives

At the end of the course, students should be able to:

  • Understand and explain the core theories and models in the field of CE;

  • Evaluate the operations of existing companies with regard to CE;

  • Evaluate organizational characteristics and processes on how much they enable or constrain CE;

  • Identify ways to overcome obstacles to CE.

Timetable

You will find the timetables for all courses and degree programmes of Leiden University in the tool MyTimetable (login). Any teaching activities that you have sucessfully registered for in MyStudyMap will automatically be displayed in MyTimeTable. Any timetables that you add manually, will be saved and automatically displayed the next time you sign in.

MyTimetable allows you to integrate your timetable with your calendar apps such as Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple Calendar and other calendar apps on your smartphone. Any timetable changes will be automatically synced with your calendar. If you wish, you can also receive an email notification of the change. You can turn notifications on in ‘Settings’ (after login).

For more information, watch the video or go the the 'help-page' in MyTimetable. Please note: Joint Degree students Leiden/Delft have to merge their two different timetables into one. This video explains how to do this.

Mode of instruction

Lectures (5 * 2 hours) and tutorial sessions (5 * 2 hours)

Assessment method

Final exam (50%): Open book exam
Group presentations and reports (40%)
Active participations in tutorials (10%)

One week after the final grades are known the inspection date for exam review will be announced at Brightspace.

Reading list

Textbook:

Kuratko, D.F., Morris, M.H., & Covin, J.G. (2011). Corporate Innovation & Entrepreneurship (International Edition). 3rd edition. Mason: South-Western/Cengage Learning. ISBN: 9781111526917.

Selected articles:
Covin, J. G., Slevin, D. (1989). Strategic management in small firms in hostile and benign environments. Strategic Management Journal, 10(1), 75-87.

Fang, C., Lee, J., Schilling, M. (2010). Balancing Exploration and Exploitation Through Structural Design: The Isolation of Subgroups and Organizational Learning. Organization Science, 21(3), 625-642.

Hornsby, J., Kuratko, D., Zahra, S. (2002). Middle managers' perception of the internal environment for corporate entrepreneurship: assessing a measurement scale. Journal of Business Venturing, 17(3), 253-273.

Rauch, A., Wiklund, J., Lumpkin, G. T., Frese, M. (2009). Entrepreneurial Orientation and Business Performance: An Assessment of past Research and Suggestions for the Future. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 33(3), 761–787.

Wolcott, R. C., Lippitz, M. J. (2007). The four models of corporate entrepreneurship. MIT Sloan Management Review, 49(1), 75-82.

Registration

Every student has to register for courses with the enrollment tool MyStudyMap. There are two registration periods per year: registration for the fall semester opens in July and registration for the spring semester opens in December. Please see this page for more information. Exemptions are minor students and fall semester for 1st year bachelor students: the student administration will enroll these groups for courses.

Please note that it is compulsory to both preregister and confirm your participation for every exam and retake. Not being registered for a course means that you are not allowed to participate in the final exam of the course. Confirming your exam participation is possible until ten days before the exam.

Extensive FAQ's on MyStudymap can be found here.

This course can only be followed as part of the SBI minor (15 or 30 ECTS).

Contact

info@sbb.leidenuniv.nl

Remarks

  • Students are responsible for enrolling/unenrolling themselves for (partial) exams/retakes.

  • Students who do not enroll themselves for an exam/retake by the deadline are not allowed to take the exam/retake.

  • Students fail the course if any of the partial components (except the exam) that make up the final mark of the course is assessed below 4.0.

  • Students fail the course if the grade for the (final) exam is assessed below 5.0.

  • The final grade is expressed as a whole or half number between 1.0 and 10.0, including both limits. The result is not to be expressed as a number between 5.0 and 6.0.

  • If one of the components of the final mark constitutes a component that assesses attendance or class participation, students cannot take a retake for this component. Therefore, students fail the course if their mark for this component is less than 4.0.

  • Partial grades, inclusive the exam grade will not be rounded. If partial grades will be communicated, it is possible partial grades are rounded, but unrounded partial grades will be used in the calculation of the final grade. The final grade will be rounded at 0.5 (5.49 will rounded down to a 5 and a 5.5 will be rounded up to a 6.0).

  • It is not possible to do retakes for group assignments. Therefore, if students fail the group assignment component, they fail the course.

  • Students pass the course if the final mark is 6.0 or higher (5.49 will rounded down to a 5 and a 5.5 will be rounded up to a 6.0).

  • For courses, for which class participation is an assessment component, students may not be penalised for an absence if the student has a legitimate justification for this absence. The student must notify the program coordinator via email (info@sbb.leidenuniv.nl) of such an absence BEFORE the lecture, describing the reason for missing the lecture. If the student does not notify the program coordinator before the lecture, the student will be penalised. Students may be required to provide further documentation to substantiate their case, and class attendance requirements are only waived under exceptional circumstances such as illness.

  • Students who are entitled to more exam/retake time must report to info@sbb.leidenuniv.nl 10 days before the exam/retake takes place.