Full program description
Entrepreneurship is one of the most effective ways to create value, whether you are launching a venture, building something new inside an organization, or exploring a next chapter in your career. Wharton Online’s Entrepreneurship Certificate guides you through a clear three-stage progression — Inspiration, Identification, and Implementation — helping you cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset, evaluate opportunities with rigor, and build the relationships and systems that move an idea into action.
Across three fully online, self-paced courses, Wharton faculty translate decades of research on venture development into practical frameworks and tools you can apply immediately. You’ll learn to think entrepreneurially, test possibilities with discipline, and pursue ideas with greater clarity and confidence — preparing you to create meaningful impact in whatever path you choose.
Learning Journey
Course 1: Becoming Entrepreneurial: Purpose, Paths, and Inspiration
Build the foundation to understand entrepreneurship as value creation in many forms. You will:
- Explore Professor Lori Rosenkopf’s Seven Pathways to Entrepreneurship (intrapreneurship, acquisition, funding, tech commercialization, social impact, bootstrapping, and disruption) and identify the one(s) that aligns with your goals
- Recognize where your skills, values, and experiences naturally fit in the entrepreneurial landscape
- Clarify your motivations, mindset, and appetite for risk
- Assess the resources, relationships, and experiences you can leverage
- Strengthen foundational behaviors like curiosity, resilience, creativity, and adaptive thinking
Course 2: From Idea to Impact: Entrepreneurial Opportunity Identification
Develop the skills to distinguish promising ideas from distractions. You will:
- Identify opportunities by examining unmet needs, market shifts, and emerging technologies
- Apply structured frameworks such as innovation tournaments, jobs-to-be-done, and the triple diamond model
- Generate, refine, and compare ideas using systematic, repeatable methods
- Translate customer insights into clear value propositions and solution concepts
- Design low-cost tests to validate assumptions and reduce uncertainty
- Craft opportunity statements and concise pitches that communicate potential
- Strengthen habits of curiosity, experimentation, and evidence-based decision making
Course 3: From Plan to Performance: Venture Implementation
Build the systems and relationships that turn ideas into real-world impact. You will:
- Assemble and align early-stage teams that can execute and adapt
- Learn how to design, manage, and lead startup boards that add value and support accountability
- Evaluate funding options and building productive relationships with investors
- Discover how to structure deals and negotiations that enable sustainable growth
- Understand how to form and manage partnerships that accelerate scale and competitive advantage
- Learn how to navigate complex stakeholder dynamics using perspective taking and clear communication
- Map the networks and decisions essential to implementing and scaling your venture
Faculty
Lori Rosenkopf, Vice Dean of Entrepreneurship, Wharton School
Christian Terwiesch, Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions
Karl Ulrich, Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions
Henning Piezunka, Associate Professor of Management