The academic engine for entrepreneurs

As temperatures rise, we're looking back on a busy (and successful!) winter 2023 term with our students.

Graduate students in the Master of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology (MBET) programs and undergraduate students in BET 300 or Enterprise Co-op (E Co-op) performed admirably in both on- and off-campus competitions.

Velocity Innovation Challenge: 

With a week to collaborate and devise solutions to global food, health and energy problems, nine student teams from presented their ideas at Velocity’s Innovation Challenge in February.

The work world has been permanently transformed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Zoom meetings are the new norm, even now that pandemic restrictions have been lifted. Employers are increasingly adopting artificial intelligence programs for many work tasks that humans once did.

But against this backdrop there are also labour shortages in many sectors. The unemployment-to-job vacancy ratio is at a historic low across Canada, partly because baby boomers who are close to retirement age have left the workforce, but not enough younger people are coming in behind them.

In another Waterloo first, the Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business (Conrad) will launch Canada’s first PhD program in Entrepreneurship and Organization this fall. Conrad has long been a programmatic innovator in entrepreneurship education, having launched the country’s first immersive entrepreneurship graduate program 20 years ago, and a suite of undergraduate entrepreneurship courses and programs.

Unlike traditional business school doctoral programs that focus on management and organizations, Conrad’s new PhD takes a different approach. Instead, it offers students the opportunity to rigorously study human behaviour and organization with a focus on entrepreneurial contexts.