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.

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.

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
• embed AI, big data and digital tools in the heart of your innovation processes
• 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.