Entrepreneurship & Corporate Innovation

Innovating to build a new enterprise in any context

YOUR CAREER IN THIS PATHWAY​

This career pathway is for people who want to focus their careers on innovation—and risk. It’s about creating new businesses that challenge the status quo.

You can pursue this pathway as an individual or team by launching a startup, by joining a scale-up that needs your skills to help accelerate growth, or by joining a corporate unit charged with innovation and/or venture building. 

As a business school, we are very active in the world of new ventures and we also talk continuously with company recruiters to keep track of trends and opportunities. We do this to offer our candidates and students an updated view on careers in the pathway of Entrepreneurship & Corporate Innovation. Our mission is to help you make a good choice about whether this pathway might be a good fit with your aspirations, strengths, goals—and in this case your appetite for risk. Explore the major career areas we've identified for you in this pathway and their transversal applicability.

  • Startups

    Do you have an idea, a team (or both) and are thinking about launching a company? This is a tough, high-risk career pursuit and not for the faint of heart. It’s about studying your potential market and customers, refining your idea, forging plans that will inevitably need to change, building a team that can survive, raising funds, and getting it off the ground. You’ll most likely have to self-finance for some time, or try to make this happen in parallel with a full- or part-time job.

  • Scale-ups & Growth Hacking

    Being an entrepreneur via a startup isn’t the only way to get into the game. If you're interested in the electricity of being involved in something young, vibrant and even wild—but you also like the idea of stability and a consistent paycheck—then you might consider the world of scale-ups. These are early-stage companies that have traction, have secured funding, and are starting to ramp up their growth. The founders and funders are looking for talent who can make big contributions to helping them scale. If you have a lot of grit and an entrepreneurial spirit—but don’t want to start a company yourself—then targeting a scale-up might be a good option for you in the next steps of your career.

  • Corporate Innovation & Business Building

    Individual entrepreneurs aren’t the only people who generate innovative ideas and build businesses.  Increasingly, big companies do it too. Leveraging their assets, know-how and talent, corporations are starting to become adept at sensing opportunities and capturing them. This happens in two primary ways: innovation units within companies identify opportunities to drive new products, services and business models, or make changes to existing ones, and work within the existing corporate structure to turn these ideas into reality: “venture building” units within companies are spinning out startups to bring innovations to reality outside the company as new ventures.

PROGRAMS IN THIS PATHWAY

If you are excited about Entrepreneurship & Corporate Innovation, we offer several educational options to kick-start or accelerate your pursuit of this path, either via concentrations within our general management programs or as dual degrees that give you a chance to specialize in a particular area in which you want to pursue entrepreneurial activity. 

BachelorsMore information below

PURSUE PURPOSE IN THIS PATHWAY

We invite you to join us in a new movement of business professionals working to forge a new and better world. If your pathway turns out to be Entrepreneurship & Corporate Innovation, you might consider using your innovative spirit and drive to build new business in a way that creates a positive impact and purpose—either in a for-profit or non-profit enterprise. It is in your hands to create a better world; challenge yourself.

How can you be an entrepreneur with purpose? Below we offer you some possibilities to consider. And if you study with us at IE Business School, you'll have opportunities to explore your own purpose and how you might align it with this career path.

  • 01.

    Launch or get involved in a social impact startup...

     or scale-up that delivers a product or service that has positive societal benefits.

  • 02.

    Get involved in a startup or scale-up...

    that is working to address an opportunity in the green economy.

  • 03.

    Work for a social organization...

     that promotes and funds social entrepreneurs.

  • 04.

    Pursue your next steps in a corporate foundation or social innovation unit...

    of a major corporation that promotes and funds innovation projects with real social or environmental impact.

    KEEP CHASING THE NEXT BEST YOU