Innovation & Corporate Entrepreneurship Essentials Program

In today’s complex and disruptive world, innovation is key to staying relevant to customers, keeping ahead of the competition, and taking advantage of emerging digital technologies. The Innovation & Corporate Entrepreneurship Essentials Program will equip you with insights, skills, and tools to act as a frontrunner in innovation and corporate entrepreneurship within your organization. Renowned WHU faculty members and experienced innovation practitioners, with extensive international experience, will share with you the latest research results, practical tools, and agile methods for innovation in a variety of formats. The program is designed to engage all aspects of innovation and entrepreneurship through guest lectures, group work, case studies, and a Serious Lego Play Session.

You will be awarded with a WHU Executive Education Certificate after successfully completing the program.

Corporate TransformationInnovationManagement EssentialsStrategy

Suitable for executives with:

Leadership Experience

1Years10+

Work Experience

1Years10+

Program Faculty

Competitive disruption, shrinking product life cycles, and constantly changing customer needs and expectations: these are some of the serious challenges most businesses face today. To survive – let alone thrive – you need to accelerate and sustain innovation by seizing the opportunities emerging from innovative technological advances and new business models, data, and analytics.

The Innovation & Corporate Entrepreneurship Essentials Program is targeted at young professionals, executives, and middle managers from various industry backgrounds who want to apply corporate entrepreneurship and innovation principles to their own businesses. The program consists of a range of different teaching formats that help you in engaging with all aspects of innovation. The learning experience encompasses lectures, group work, case studies, and a Serious Lego Play Session. You will also have the chance to reach out to your program peers and exchange relevant experiences and generate more practical ideas. WHU’s renowned faculty members, as well as experienced practitioners, will share their latest research results and practical tools during the program, giving you cutting-edge science and management insights on entrepreneurship and innovation.

We are happy to announce the following guest speakers:

Julian Fieres, Head of Transformation, Strategy & Sustainability @ ZF Electrified Powertrain Technology
Freya Oehle, Founder & CEO 3tausendsassa and spottster.com
Manfred Tropper, Founder & CEO mantro GmbH

You will learn how to leverage your organizational talent and resources to foster innovation within your own firm. The program explores state-of-the-art innovation practices for a stronger (digital) customer experience, a successful ecosystem of partnerships with start-ups, and strategic relationships with users and communities. To understand the human side of innovation, you will take a deep dive into the culture and leadership styles of innovation. You will also be introduced to the novel structures used by companies to stimulate innovation (e.g. ambidextrous organization, Spotify-model, micro-structures).

Innovation is all about dynamics and speed: learn to drive innovation to the market with start-up velocity and gain the necessary innovation tools to boost your business competitiveness and power your future growth!

Do you want to know more about the content of this program? Check out this episode of the WHU Best and Most Awesome Founder Podcast in which Prof. Dr. Dries Faems, coordinator of the Innovation & Corporate Entrepreneurship Essentials Program, discusses the core challenges of innovation and corporate entrepreneurship with leading management thinker and Stanford Professor Steve Blank.

Recognize why most companies struggle with innovation, why most innovations fail and how breakthrough innovations really happen in leading companies
Understand how to make a compelling case for innovation and lead the charge for innovation in your organization
Develop the skills to unleash your creativity, inspire passion for innovation and build a vibrant innovation culture
Gain a deep understanding of the strategic implications of innovation
Gather insights into design thinking, rapid prototyping, agile implementation and other start-up like approaches to innovation
Learn how to deal with creative destruction and disruption to establish an entrepreneurship spirit within your company
Realize how companies can build successful innovation ecosystems with external stakeholders (start-ups, universities and even competitors)

Young professionals, executives and middle managers wanting to

grasp the importance and applicability of innovation & entrepreneurship into your own organization
cultivate an innovation culture throughout your company
foster and drive innovation
ignite creative talent
recognize, attain and exploit smart ideas from outside your business
better understand and serve customer needs
accelerate the time from idea to market
initiate and lead innovation-driven organizational transformation
transform your business unit/function

This program is suitable for companies of all sectors and sizes. The minimum number of participants for the program is 12.

This program runs for 3 days at WHU Campus Düsseldorf, Germany.

Innovation & Corporate Entrepreneurship Essentials Program

Jan 31, 2022 - Feb 02, 2022, Düsseldorf, Germany

Get the full General Management Experience – Special offer

This Program is part of the Management Essentials Program, a package that provides participants, who are transitioning into a leadership position, or have done so recently, with the fundamental skills of General Management. You can choose 3 out of 5 of the following programs: Leadership Essentials, Strategy Essentials, Financial Literacy, Brand Management, and Innovation & Corporate Entrepreneurship Essentials.

In combination with an additional personality profile, the 3 programs can be scheduled flexibly to make them best fit your professional and personal schedule.

Upon completion of the program, participants receive WHU’s “Certificate of Excellence in General Management”. Furthermore, you can choose to gain 6 ECTS credits.

More about the Management Essentials Program

We offer each of our Open Programs also as a Customized Program for corporate clients.

The advantage for you is that program contents and methods can be adjusted to your company’s strategy and your employees’ skills and needs.

Please contact us via customprograms@whu.edu if you are interested in a Customized Program.

Take a glimpse into successful innovation and watch the episode "Decoding Innovation Theater with Steve Blank" of WHU's Most Awesome Founder Podcast with Professor Dries Faems!

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