First entrepreneurship BA launched at IDC
The Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya announced the launch of an English language undergraduate degree in entrepreneurship, the first to be offered in Israel.
The program, which recently received the approval of the Council for Higher Education, will award students a dual major degree in entrepreneurship from the Adelson School of Entrepreneurship, headed by Prof. Yair Tauman, taught in English along with a degree in business administration that will be taught in Hebrew.
In the future, the IDC plans to also offer dual degrees in entrepreneurship and computer science.
“Our main goal is to provide students the tools, skills, knowledge and network to realize their innovative ideas and start their own company,” Dr. Yossi Maaravi, the school’s deputy dean and a recognized expert on innovation, entrepreneurship and negotiation, told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.
The IDC, he explained, has for the past 16 years run two activities in entrepreneurship: the prestigious and highly selective Zell program for entrepreneurship, an honors program which accepts only some 24 students per year, and an entrepreneurship club, which has seen a dramatic increase in participation, with over 2,000 students taking part this academic year.
“Somewhere between the 24 and 2,000 students that participate in these programs and events is the real number of students that want to be part of an entrepreneurship program,” he said. “The school [of entrepreneurship] itself was designed to answer these needs, and over the past three years we have been building the school and designing the academic program.”
The architecture of the building illustrates the spirit of innovation and reality-changing thinking. It is designed to serve as a “factory” for innovative ideas and, as such, includes standard lecture halls alongside modular classrooms, “accelerators” and networking spaces.
“On a macro level, the program was designed according to the entrepreneurial process, as we see it both in practice and academic research,” he said.
“The first stage is to identify different opportunities and come up with innovative ideas. Then you have to acquire the knowledge, resources and tools to fulfill this ideal project, after which you have to be able to develop the business model around it, and later on you have to work on developing the model into the growth stage.”
The degree will address each of the stages in the process. Core courses will be offered alongside classes such as the psychology of creativity and innovation, legal and technical aspects of entrepreneurial endeavors, entrepreneurial financing, go-to-marketing, ethics and how to deal with failure.
The program, Maaravi added, relies on a “project-based approach” to engage students and have them learn by doing.