MBA program to offer Entrepreneurship concentration
Monday, October 14, 2019
Whether you are starting a company, are an executive in an existing firm or are managing a small or family business, entrepreneurial skills are critical to identifying and evaluating the factors that will make your undertaking a success. The Spears School of Business MBA in Entrepreneurship curriculum integrates all business areas including marketing, finance, business analytics, accounting and entrepreneurship to produce students who have well-round business skills coupled with entrepreneurship-related training and preparation.
Dr. Bruce Barringer, department head for the School of Entrepreneurship, thinks that entrepreneurship is a set of skills and a way of looking at the world that can be helpful to everyone regardless of their path in life.
“Entrepreneurship is more than just an academic discipline, it’s a way of managing and looking at your life,” Barringer said. “It involves creativity, openness to change and alertness to new ideas.”
“One thing that we feel good about in our program is that the skillsets that students learn through our classes will be valuable to them regardless of what they do in life.”
With the new MBA concentration emerging, Dr. Barringer hopes it will appeal to two types of people – younger, mid-level executives who want to increase their career trajectory or students who are interested in starting a business.
This concentration prepares students for their careers by allowing them to be more alert to emerging opportunities within the workplace. Students will be more open to change because they will be taking classes where innovation drives success.
Students have the opportunity to intern within new startup companies, allowing students in the entrepreneurship concentration to view startups from a different perspective, rather than through on-going companies.
“What’s unique about this concentration is that students will be able to take the CIE Scholar Capstone Experience, instead of the Capstone Business Strategies class,” Barringer said. “It focuses on university technology that may have commercial potential, and the students work in teams to discern whether or not there is commercial potential in these technologies.”
The curriculum also takes students beyond the classroom and allows them to test themselves in real world settings.
“There is an increasing number of entrepreneurship specific study abroad opportunities,” Barringer said. “We have two in the works, one in Costa Rica and one in India, that both focus on startup businesses in those countries.”
Students in the concentration also have the ability to attend South by Southwest (SXSW), a technology festival in Austin to learn more about SXSW interactive. The trip will include participation in the conference, a business plan competition, new business launch events, networking possibilities with prominent entrepreneurs and an immersive tour of the Austin entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Classes for the entrepreneurship concentration will be offered at OSU-Tulsa and the main Stillwater campus.
For more information about the concentration, students may visit the entrepreneurship concentration page or via email at spearsmasters@okstate.edu.
MEDIA CONTACT: Terry Tush | Director, Marketing and Communications | 405-744-2703 | terry.tush@hotmail.com