Digital Entrepreneurship

The Digital Entrepreneurship programme is a trailblazing Master’s degree when it comes to the development and promotion of digital startups. Its novelty lies in offering advanced training in business and technology for graduates of all disciplines. In particular, the Master’s degree is aimed at women and men with a strong inclination to start a business. The programme’s didactic concept, which focuses on coaching and mentoring students and project-oriented work in multidisciplinary teams, is just as innovative.

Students develop their digital business ideas together and grow their skills, their entrepreneurial mindset. In addition, they strengthen their expertise in the areas of digital business models, service engineering and digital technologies. As an added bonus: From the outset students come into contact with Styrian, national and international drivers of the startup ecosystem and can make active use of this network.

Something that has been on the rise in recent years is the idea of co-innovation between established companies and innovative startups. While large companies usually have broad market access, startups above all offer speed and innovative capacity. In order to remain agile and competitive, large companies increasingly invite startups to join their ecosystem. Corporate entrepreneurship is therefore a key topic of the course alongside venture creation.

Our graduates are professionally flexible and are able to set up a scalable startup themselves or drive innovation in established companies.

Entrepreneurial Mindset

In these modules, central skills are developed and strengthened through project workshops.

Be Visionary, a Design Thinker: You will learn about the elements of the design thinking process, use your creativity to generate business ideas and identify scalable business opportunities.
Be Courageous, Focussed and Flexible: Setting up a startup requires creativity as well as other skills. You will therefore develop your innovative capacity and strengthen skills such as courage and a focused and flexible way of working.

Stay Physically and Mentally Strong: It is important for an entrepreneur to lead a health-conscious and resilient lifestyle. You learn to integrate healthy everyday routines and healthy ways of working and view them as an essential part of a startup company. Another focus is on perseverance and tenacity as well as the ability to deal with failure and stress.

Build Sustainable and Inclusive Businesses: Sustainability is the core of every company. You will get to know models for impact measurement and develop the impact for your own startup or innovation idea. You will also look into ways to promote diversity and inclusion in companies.

Service Engineering, Digital and Data Technologies, Tech Labs

The technical modules teach students about state-of-the-art technologies, service engineering and innovative business models. The Tech Lab projects are all about the intimate links between theory and practice.

You will get to know digital technologies that are innovation drivers for new digital or hybrid business models. You will be aware of their potential for digital services as well as of testing service prototypes. In addition to learning about (IoT) technologies for data generation and data storage, you will also familiarise yourself with other web technologies. In order to be able to analyse large quantities of generated and stored data to make predictions, you will look into the latest methods and applications of data science such as artificial intelligence and big data. You will also learn about the methodology of product and requirement specifications to manage technical processes.

Venture Creation, Corporate Entrepreneurship, Co-Innovation

In these modules, students gain important know-how on company startups and corporate entrepreneurship.

You will look into market positioning, value proposition and digital marketing. You can work out the profitability of a business idea using the business case. You will also learn how to develop forms of financing and fundraising strategies and define the key performance indicators of a company. The Legal Setup course focuses on central legal aspects for startups, such as licensing, tax and social security issues as well as questions of liability. The development of growth hacking strategies calls for your creativity as well as state-of-the-art technology.

As a future founder or innovator, you will not only learn about leadership and change management, you will also design innovation strategies for established organisations. These organisations have to reinvent themselves in order to escape the so-called innovator’s dilemma. As part of a team you will develop digital business models in the field of corporate entrepreneurship and co-innovation. You also deal with international market entry strategies and roadmaps for product development.

Startup Labs

The Startup Labs are the focus of the degree programme: From the first to the third semester, students apply their theoretical knowledge to projects and develop digital business ideas in small multidisciplinary teams under the supervision of coaches and mentors. Students are taught the first steps, from setting up a startup to driving innovation in a company. The Tech Labs provide the teams with technical support and allow them to try out digital or hybrid business models.

The Startup Labs introduce students to the milestones involved in the development of digital business ideas. You look at market research and the testing of business case assumptions in order to evaluate the market potential of your own business or innovation idea. In addition, you simulate the digital business case, derive logical conclusions from the evaluation and simulation results and demonstrate the business opportunities of your idea. In addition to analysing digital business models, you can create a pitch deck for your own business or innovation idea and present the results to an expert jury.

The Startup Labs finally culminate in a Master’s thesis, which includes a minimum viable product (MVP) or prototype and in the best case leads to the foundation of a company.