Newcastle University

Aims

The module Business Emergence and Growth explores the concepts of opportunity recognition and creative thinking, types of organisations (start ups, spin-offs, small and medium enterprises, large enterprises and multinational enterprises), personality, gender and ethnicity in entrepreneurship/management, business growth models and corporate strategies/entrepreneurship. The course will inform students and give them an opportunity to develop an understanding and a critical awareness of current theories and approaches relevant to establishing a new business, surviving, growing, innovating and competing globally. The course is designed to introduce students, through a series of lectures, case studies and small group learning activities, to the different kinds of businesses (and entrepreneurship) and equip them with the knowledge and skills necessary for the next stages of their education.

Aims
• To provide an understanding of the concepts of opportunity recognition and creative thinking, types of organisations (start ups, spin-offs, small and medium enterprises, large enterprises and multinational enterprises), personality, gender and ethnicity in entrepreneurship/management, business growth models and corporate strategies/entrepreneurship.
• To enable students to identify, analyse, discuss and debate the broad range of perspectives and practical issues concerning business emergence, development and growth in a globalised economy.
• To equip students with the knowledge and skills needed to improve their perspectives about businesses and entrepreneurship.
• To encourage students to critically evaluate the determinants of successful businesses.

Original Summary:

Outline Of Syllabus

18 two-hour sessions spread over eighteen weeks.

1. Business Emergence and Growth
2. Business owners, entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship
3. Making money from ideas and opportunities: the start-up phase
4. Small and medium sized enterprises: evolution and revolution periods
5. The personality of the owner/manager/entrepreneur
6. Guest Speaker
7. Female and ethnic business owners/entrepreneurs
8. Creativity and the creative entrepreneur
9. Types of organisations: from bureaucracy to controlled chaos (part I)
10. Types of organisations (part II + semester 1 recap)
11. Corporate growth strategies
12. Internationalisation strategies: culture & societies
13. Guest Speaker
14. Strategy of competitive advantages
15. Growing through innovation and collaboration
16. Corporate entrepreneurship
17. Organisational decline and turnaround strategies
18. Course Recap and Review.

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

The course is structured as 18 two hour sessions, each organised around a concept/ theme as presented in the ‘outline of syllabus’ below. Each week there is a core reading, which students should do before the session and a range of further reading, which will enable students to explore each theme in more depth. I will also be recommending other material – ‘non-academic journals’, newspapers, television programmes, websites, blogs and so on – which will give the student further insight into businesses’ emergence and growth in the real business world. Case studies, real-world examples and problem-based learning will be used in the 18 two hour sessions sculptured around the philosophy of a student-centred learning process; the academic environment provides ample opportunities to create core expertise, analytical and critical thinking, and to produce high-quality practitioners, while making the sessions enjoyable to participating students.
As well as formal learning session, the Newcastle University Business School has a large number of integrated Business Networking Events, which students attend. These provide them the opportunity to listen to practitioners and guest speakers, as well as network with a wide range of local business people.
Blackboard Learning Environment:
The lecture notes, PowerPoint slides, details of assignments/exams and other information, together with important announcements, will be available on the Blackboard web site for this module. We will be using Blackboard to communicate with you and you are strongly encouraged to use Blackboard to communicate with each other (for example through discussion forums). You can access Blackboard at http://blackboard.ncl.ac.uk.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

Aware of the variety of knowledge outcomes of this module, undergraduate students are required to develop their understanding of the concepts of business emergence and growth. Students are assessed through one individual assignment and a final written examination. The assignment (counts for 35% of the final grade for the module) is set at the first semester and it aims to give students the opportunity to learn how to structure and write an academic essay while they also reflect on the knowledge acquired during the first semester and test their individual performance. The final examination (counts for 65% of the final grade of the module) is a 2 hour written examination set at the end of semester 2. Students are expected to critically synthesise the knowledge they have gained from the course in order to effectively and efficiently answer a number of questions relevant to the topics presented and discussed throughout the eighteen lectures.

Resit is 2 hour exam.