Programs TU/e

Entrepreneurship and Innovation Minor
Entrepreneurship is everywhere. It’s more than just starting your own company; it’s the spirit that drives economic growth in every country, evident in nearly any context. Established multinational companies with large R&D departments, for example, have a growing need for entrepreneurial engineers – people capable of developing innovative technologies, as well as commercializing those technologies through successful business models. In other words, the new generation of engineers must be able to discover and exploit new business opportunities. That is why the Department of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences now offers a Minor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

The minor program fosters an awareness and deepens knowledge of the phenomenon of technology entrepreneurship and related issues. It broadens engineering students’ perspective and seeks to instill an entrepreneurial mindset, a particular way of thinking that makes students more receptive to discovering and exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities. This is an essential asset in both corporate settings (for new business ventures) and self-employment (starting your own business). The entrepreneurial knowledge and skills obtained are combined and applied in a final project, where students conduct a supervised research project to develop a basic entrepreneurial business plan.

The minor program consists of the following courses, along with the final project:
• Entrepreneurship & Innovation
• Intellectual Property Rights
• New Product Development Processes
• Marketing & Purchasing Management

For more detailed information about these courses, see the 2010-2011 Entrepreneurship Program brochure for bachelor’s students.

Additional courses offered as part of the minor are:
• Business Economics
• Organizational Behavior & Human Performance
• An Introduction to Ethics (Academic Integrity)

For more detailed information about these courses, see www.tue.nl

The E&I minor is open to all undergraduates at TU/e, except those in the Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences and Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences for Healthcare bachelor’s programs. Students must have already obtained their first-year propaedeutic diploma to be eligible for enrollment. They should apply through the department or faculty under which they are registered. If accepted, students will start their minor in the first semester of the third year of their bachelor’s degree, with a kick-off meeting.

You can register for the Entrepreneurship and Innovation minor through the department or faculty under which you are registered. Detailed information can be found in our E-brochure. For specific questions, please contact Ivo George at i.g.j.george@tue.nl.


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