Enhancing intrapreneurial skills of students through entrepreneurship education : a case study of an interdisciplinary Engineering Management Programme

Innovation orientation in a modern society is experiencing extensive complexity due to rise in globalization, revolutionary changes in technologies and standard of living. Intrapreneurship defined as the innovative initiatives undertaken inside an organization is an effective strategy to address these complexities systematically. Successful ideas within an organization occur due to the tireless persistence and practical imagination of intrapreneurs who are the smart innovators actively involved in the design and creation of new products, ventures and business models. Today there is an increasing global demand for such intrapreneurs and different universities are therefore adopting various entrepreneurship education and training programmes to cater to this. Pedagogy in higher education is also witnessing a significant rise in new interdisciplinary programmes specifically designed for non-business students such as art, engineering, and science students so as to develop their organizational management skills. This paper sheds light on these growing trends of different University programmes and examines their effectiveness. It utilizes an in-depth study of one such successful case: the MSc Engineering Management programme in the University of York, United Kingdom in its role of enhancing intrapreneurial skills of global students. This paper explores how this programme has successfully incorporated active and experiential learning tactics within its teaching modules to gradually train and build up the intrapreneurial skills for working in multidisciplinary teams and industries.