Entrepreneurial Leadership
Lead with Innovation and Vision
Launch new ventures and lead organizations through strategic change with Duquesne’s Master of Science in Entrepreneurial Leadership (MS-EL). This 30-credit entrepreneurship degree will provide you with the skills to start new businesses and lead entrepreneurial initiatives within existing enterprises.
Earn an MS-EL Your Way
Complete your MS in Entrepreneurial Leadership at your pace with flexible degree options, and earn your MS-EL in 3-6 semesters, with spring, summer, and fall start terms available. You can transition from our Graduate Certificate in Entrepreneurship or our Graduate Certificate in Executive Leadership into the MS-EL, or you can begin your studies directly in the MS-EL. You’ll be paired with a student success coach who will help you build your MS-EL course plan and help you choose a schedule that suits you. While most of the program can be completed online, several courses have high-impact in-person evening or weekend sessions built into the curriculum.
Learn More About Duquesne's MS-EL Degree
In the flexible MS-EL program, you’ll gain experience with ideation, change management, pitching business projects, and securing venture capital. You’ll have opportunities to leverage Duquesne’s connections to the regional entrepreneurship ecosystem, which was recently ranked as one of the top-25 global emerging startup environments.
During your master's program, you will create, invent, and learn in our state-of-the-art Center for Excellence in Entrepreneurship, which includes the Louis D. Mallet Entrepreneurship Zone and Bob’s Launch Pad, an innovative maker space where students collaborate on idea generation, problem solving, and business planning. Students also have the opportunity to participate in the Duquesne New Venture Challenge and take advantage of services provided by the Small Business Development Center (SBDC).
Program Information
Launch new ventures and build innovative organizations with this 30-credit master's degree.
Program Type
Major
Degree
Master's
Academic Department
Management and Marketing
More in This Program
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MS-EL Courses
Opportunity recognition and exploitation are an important component of the entrepreneurial process. In this course, students will learn the basics of opportunity recognition and exploitation, including applying design thinking in identifying pertinent stakeholders, overcoming likely market and legal roadblocks and building the entrepreneurial team. Students will develop a feasibility analysis for a new start-up venture or a corporate venture within their existing organization. As part of the feasibility analysis, students will learn how to conduct a "voice of the customer" analysis to properly vet their idea. Lastly, students can "road test" their feasibility analysis by participating in the Pittsburgh Start-up Weekend and/or Duquesne University New Venture Challenge (DNVC). Prerequisites: None. Offered every fall semester.
New ventures require the application of managerial discipline across all functions. In this course, students will learn how to integrate all business functions – marketing, finance, operations, human resources, information systems, accounting, etc. – into a start-up or corporate new venture. As part of the learning process, students will transform their feasibility analysis to a working business plan by conducting industry and market research, identifying and then engaging initial stakeholders such as suppliers, customers, etc. To facilitate this process students will apply critical tools such as a business model canvas (BMC), minimal viable product (MVP), etc. Prerequisite: ENTR 601 for level GR with minimum grade of C (may be taken concurrently).
Students will evaluate legal entity choices (partnership, corporation, or LLC), capital structure (debt/equity), tax elections (e.g., S corporation), and co-owner protections. Legal options related to intellectual property (IP) protection (e.g., copyright, trademark, patent, and trade secret law) as well as key IP protection forms (e.g., non-disclosure, invention assignment, and employee confidentiality agreements) will be reviewed. Students will learn about early-stage funding and how to engage investors, including understanding initial stakeholders and applying relevant legal terminology (e.g., preferred stock provisions, liquidation preferences, dividends, voting rights, ratchets, and waivers of director conflict of interest). Finally, this course will review legal and regulatory matters (e.g., complying with SEC filings), as well as the basics of contract law. Prerequisite: ENTR 601 for level GR with minimum grade of C.
Start-ups, as well as larger firms, face a variety of marketing and sales challenges when commercializing new products or services. This course focuses on marketing fundamentals, market research, and sales force planning and execution in an entrepreneurial environment. Developing a marketing plan and identifying initial customers is another major milestone, both in new ventures and existing firms launching new products or services. In this course, students learn how to translate business plans into actionable sales and marketing strategies and tactics. They also learn the first steps to take to initially engage customers, which could include piloting, prototyping and/or co-developing a product/service. Students will also learn how to develop pro forma financial projections that include marketing and sales analyses. Prerequisite: ENTR 601 for level GR with minimum grade of C.
You will gain a deep understanding of human behavior in organizations and how to maximize organizational and unit performance by effective leadership of human capital. Examples of topics covered include perception, attitudes, power, influence, motivation, group dynamics, managing teams, diversity, managing conflict, negotiation and culture.
An exciting overview of contemporary thinking about executive leadership, including how to develop and execute a vision for the future. Features accomplished senior executives who share their insights and experiences with you about the leadership challenges they have faced.
This course will expose you to the fundamentals of managing a profit and loss center. You will get a better understanding of financial statements including the balance sheet, income statement and the statement of cash flows. Basic financial concepts like financial ratios, time value of money and capital budgeting will be introduced. The goal of the course is to provide a foundation of financial literacy so that leaders can make effective decisions within their organizations.
You will learn the skills and processes to lead organizational changes that enable the creation of sustainable value. You will focus on theories, concepts, and applications so that you can successfully initiate, analyze and implement organizational changes. Additionally, you will practice the skills that leaders need to make positive change, and learn about the barriers to organizational change.
This course teaches graduate students essential qualitative decision-making skills for analyzing business issues with an ethical dimension. Conflicting and complementary conceptions of the ethical decision-making model are presented that demonstrate how to critically reason through ethical dilemmas in business across all business functions. These rational processes will enable students to effectively recognize, evaluate and resolve ethical conflicts. Throughout the seminar, the analytical frameworks will be applied to common ethical challenges to businesses. The purpose is for students completing this module to be able to identify which ethical framework is most appropriate for addressing a given real world issue and ultimately be able to apply that framework to facilitate responsible decision making. Thus, the course begins with a detailed description and application of each ethical decision-making framework to ensure students understand how and in what contexts these tools are utilized. Then, attention is paid to the various individual, organizational, and institutional factors that affect ethical misconduct in the workplace. Personal cognitive influences, common intra-organizational pressures, regulatory factors, and market forces are discussed in terms of how they moderate ethical behavior in business. Once students learn the sources of ethical indiscretions in organizations, methods for constructing and manipulating organizational environments to increase the likelihood of ethical behavior among the firm’s stakeholders are offered.
The purpose of this course is to provide business professionals with the knowledge needed to manage and utilize information systems and technology within a business organization. As information systems have become critical to the success of modern business organizations, knowledge of information systems has become a key success factor for all business professionals within the organization. This course provides comprehensive and integrative coverage of essential new technologies, information system applications, and their impact on business models. Moreover, this course emphasizes the conceptualization of information systems as structured technology configurations working collectively to serve the information needs of an organization.
This project-based signature course gives students the tools to develop and present actionable business plans. Students will be put into teams based on their interests and goals, then work online and use video conferencing technology to create a business plan for either a new start-up or for the launch of a new product/service within an existing firm. At the end of the semester, students come to campus for a live “pitch experience.” Each team submits a written business plan and makes a live presentation to a panel of judges followed by Q&A. Students will be given guidance about how to organize their presentations and have a copy of the judges’ rubrics for evaluation. In essence, this parallels the process found in the Duquesne New Venture Challenge (DNVC) business plan competition. Prerequisite: ENTR 602 for level GR with minimum grade of C and ENTR 603 for level GR with minimum grade of C and ENTR 604 for level GR with minimum grade of C.