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  Become an all-round entrepreneurship and business development

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  Work with local businesses and entrepreneurs

From ideas to impact

Whether you want to start a venture, grow an organisation, or enable others to innovate, an entrepreneurial mindset will enhance your career opportunities. The Master’s in Business Development and Entrepreneurship (BDE) at Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ equips you with cutting-edge knowledge, relevant skills, and the mindset to foster entrepreneurship and create value for society.

In our diverse international classroom, students from various academic backgrounds exchange perspectives and tackle entrepreneurial challenges together, applying academic insights to real-world cases. During the master program, you learn to analyse opportunities, test business models, design ecosystems that foster innovation, formulate strategy, and help ventures and organisations grow. The programme combines academic rigour with practice-oriented projects, preparing you to turn ideas into impact—both for yourself and for others.

The real-world perspective

The Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ School of Economics (U.S.E.) aims to contribute to an economy where people flourish. We enrich economics with other disciplines to better solve problems and identify opportunities, from a business and a government point of view. Scientifically rigorous and societally relevant. The real-world perspective.

Impactful new businesses, with ground-breaking innovations, promoting sustainable economic growth and a better future… our conviction is that all of that starts with the entrepreneurial mindset.

Our expertise

The BDE programme is taught by a core team with world-class research expertise across all forms of entrepreneurship, combined with team members who have hands-on experience from founding ventures and working in startups and scale-ups. For example we collaborate closely with Utrecht’s dynamic startup ecosystem, one of the top 5 in the Netherlands according to .

Content of the programme

In the Master's programme in Business Development and Entrepreneurship you learn to:

• drive entrepreneurial behaviour and strategy in both new ventures and established organisations.
• recognise and validate opportunities using entrepreneurial models and tools such as effectuation, co-creation, design thinking, and market analysis.
• organise and manage growth in teams, ventures, and networks.
• understand and shape ecosystems that enable innovation and business development.
• develop and pitch integrated financing and growth plans.
• build advisory skills for diverse entrepreneurial careers.
• apply rigorous scientific methods in research and consulting projects.

Programme objectives

The objective of the Master’s programme is to equip students with the mindset, knowledge, and tools to initiate, support, and foster entrepreneurship, innovation-driven growth and business development across diverse contexts, by combining cutting-edge research insights with practice-oriented projects, skill development, and experiential learning.

Career prospects

Graduates are equipped for a wide range of careers, including roles in startups, corporates, consulting, incubators, accelerators, venture capital firms, and policy organisations. You will be able to apply your entrepreneurial mindset and analytical skills in roles that focus on boosting new business and creating environments where entrepreneurs can thrive. These pathways are captured in our three career profiles—Venture Builder, Business & Innovation Consultant, and Ecosystem Enabler.

Admission

Do you want to know if you are eligible for this Master's programme Business Development and Entrepreneurship?