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Prosperity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship MSc

London, Stratford (UCL East)

The Prosperity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship MSc will prepare you to become one of a new generation of global leaders and entrepreneurs. At the core of the programme is the concept of transformative entrepreneurship, which involves the development and implementation of innovations to address the causes and consequences of environmental degradation, economic inequality and social injustice.

UK students International students
Study mode
UK tuition fees (2024/25)
£19,300
£9,650
Programme also available on a modular (flexible) basis.
Overseas tuition fees (2024/25)
£31,100
£15,550
Programme also available on a modular (flexible) basis.
Duration
1 calendar year
2 calendar years
5 calendar years
Programme starts
September 2024
Applications accepted
Applicants who require a visa: 16 Oct 2023 – 31 May 2024
Applications close at 5pm UK time

Applications open

Applicants who do not require a visa: 16 Oct 2023 – 30 Aug 2024
Applications close at 5pm UK time

Applications open

Apply for this course

Entry requirements

A first or upper second-class UK Bachelor’s degree in an appropriate subject, or an overseas qualification of an equivalent standard from a recognised higher education institution. Evidence of extensive experience may be considered in lieu of the above, subject to approval.

The English language level for this programme is: Level 3

UCL Pre-Master's and Pre-sessional English courses are for international students who are aiming to study for a postgraduate degree at UCL. The courses will develop your academic English and academic skills required to succeed at postgraduate level.

Further information can be found on our English language requirements page.

Equivalent qualifications

Country-specific information, including details of when UCL representatives are visiting your part of the world, can be obtained from the International Students website.

International applicants can find out the equivalent qualification for their country by selecting from the list below. Please note that the equivalency will correspond to the broad UK degree classification stated on this page (e.g. upper second-class). Where a specific overall percentage is required in the UK qualification, the international equivalency will be higher than that stated below. Please contact Graduate Admissions should you require further advice.

About this degree

We find ourselves at a formative moment wherein growth-based financial models and increasing economic and social inequality are driving new forms of conflict, dislocation and ecological damage, challenging the veracity of our economic and political systems. These challenges necessitate a bold re-thinking of the relationship between economic activity and global prosperity.

At the core of this programme is the concept of transformative entrepreneurship, which involves the implementation of innovations that directly address the causes and consequences of environmental degradation as well as economic and social inequality. Entrepreneurship is widely associated with the promise of technological innovation and the emergence of new markets. Concepts such as social, sustainable, and community enterprise explore the potential of market actors and mechanisms to advance positive social and environmental change. The notion of transformative entrepreneurship takes these a step further by examining to the potential for entrepreneurship to provoke fundamental systemic change in the service of inclusive prosperity.

The Prosperity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship MSc will allow you to explore both the research and practice of transformative entrepreneurship. Conceptually, it provides a broad understanding of entrepreneurship as a practice, policy, intervention and institution. It also gives you an opportunity to critically explore both the promise and limits of entrepreneurial activity to provoke societal, economic, environmental and political change. Moreover, because standard notions of entrepreneurship are dominated by Western conceptions of markets and market activity, the Programme encourages different perspectives and forms of enterprise attuned to a variety of contexts and lived experiences. In this way, the Programme offers you the chance to embrace a genuinely global notion of transformative entrepreneurship. Practically, the Programme equips you with skills for evaluating the impact of social entrepreneurship, design thinking, prototyping with enterprise stakeholders, and values-based leadership.

Who this course is for

This programme will appeal to a range of students from around the world. In particular, individuals who already have a postgraduate degree and/or significant real-world experience in business, government, community, and third and fourth sector organisations are encouraged to apply. Entry to the programme is highly competitive and we are especially searching for students with diverse knowledge and abilities and a desire to work as part of a dynamic and inclusive community of entrepreneurs, organisational change makers and social innovators. We welcome students from social science and humanities, as well as natural science and engineering backgrounds with skills in both quantitative and qualitative research. Students with a strong personal vision for social, economic and digital transformation are especially encouraged to apply. Please also note that this is a unique transdisciplinary programme and is not a standard business, economics or development studies programme.
Read about what it takes to study for a Master's at UCL

What this course will give you

The mission of the Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) is to rethink social and environmental prosperity and to generate new entrepreneurial models and measures to deliver prosperity. Prosperous communities are socially inclusive, equitable and sustainable; however, radical changes are required to overcome today's grand challenges and to enact such prosperity.

The IGP is pioneering research into questions of prosperity and driving forward novel transdisciplinary engagements to deliver new, more prosperous social and economic forms. As a student in the Institute, you will have the opportunity to become part of this emerging community, to learn from and participate in our research, and to help shape debates around what a prosperous society should be. We expect you to become value-driven leaders and entrepreneurs who go on to deploy in your future careers the ideas and practices you have learnt.

You will have the opportunity to engage with a range of IGP researchers, partners and affiliated fellows with possibilities of developing academic, policy or entrepreneurship projects. As a multidisciplinary global university with wide resources at its disposal, UCL is the ideal environment in which to study transformative entrepreneurship.

Read about what you'll get out of a graduate programme

The foundation of your career

After graduation, we expect you to go on to define new routes to prosperity through working in your chosen field. Alumni have gone on to a wide range of careers including in business, industry, entrepreneurship, social impact investing and finance, policy making and politics, NGOs and the third sector, and further advanced study. The Institute for Global Prosperity also coordinates an affiliated network of young entrepreneurs in London (Fast Forward 2030) and is establishing similar networks in Lebanon and Kenya. The Institute for Global Prosperity further has a network of entrepreneurial, academic, non-governmental and policy partners across the globe with dense networks in London, Lebanon and Kenya. Alumni of this program will thus have access to a global network of like-minded transformative entrepreneurs.

As a student, you will be strongly encouraged to engage with these networks, which will be mobilised, to contribute to dissertation activities, societal engagement, partnerships and creating future employment opportunities. The Programme as a whole is guided by the principles of the connected curriculum and calls for students to engage in research that reaches out beyond the academy. The programme is also shaped by a commitment to diverse global, social and cultural perspectives and a commitment to inclusivity, equality and equitable partnerships. These commitments are reflected in the diversity of the external networks that you will experience as one of our students. We run several events across the academic year to link students to alumni who provide an important network and resource for our new graduates. We aim to build a networked community of like-minded and self-supporting leaders for change and our alumni play a crucial role in achieving this and in enhancing your educational experience.

Employability

Prosperity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship MSc builds on the need for a broad understanding of entrepreneurship as practice, policy, intervention and institution. It will encourage you to think beyond standard notions of entrepreneurship towards conceptions and practices capable of engendering systemic change. In addition, it will encourage you to think critically about both the promise and limits of transformative entrepreneurship, and equip you with skills in design thinking, prototyping with enterprise stakeholders, social impact assessment, and values-based leadership. The core module on theory and concepts ('Transformative Entrepreneurship and Prosperity: Core Concepts') will be drawn from a variety of disciplines with a strong focus on emergent topics and perspectives in ‘prosperity thinking’, entrepreneurship and organization theory. Complementing the conceptual aspects of the programme are modules in design thinking ('Transformative Entrepreneurship and Prosperity: Design'), a connected innovation project and dissertation. Through these modules, you will be exposed to rigorous theoretical training and engaged practice. The knowledge and skills gained in the programme will support your ability to respond to the challenges of building prosperous societies through entrepreneurship and social innovation, be it as a transformative entrepreneur, change-maker or policy leader.

A unique differentiator for the MSc is the holistic, interdisciplinary, and prosperity-oriented view of entrepreneurship and innovation. Within a few decades, entrepreneurship and social enterprise thinking and practice has infused all sectors of society and is quickly expanding globally. However, entrepreneurship and innovation teaching and training remain almost exclusively within the domain of business and management schools, which are overwhelmingly focused on for-profit enterprises and Western conceptions of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs. We seek to recruit and enhance the skills of graduates with existing entrepreneurial backgrounds and those working across the public, private and non-profit sectors. In particular, the programme fills a market gap between the social and public sectors where there is a need for graduates with a deep understanding of entrepreneurship, who are trained to deploy entrepreneurial skills in the pursuit of public policy, social impact, and non-profit aims.

Networking

There are opportunities to work closely with students and staff across the Institute for Global Prosperity. This includes weekly extra-curricular seminars with guest lecturers. Students will also have the opportunity to meet with the people who work on the IGP's wider research work, including our work on Fast Forward 2030, and our Prosperity Co-Labs (PROCOLs) in East London, Kenya and Lebanon. Students gain access to our extensive alumni network of professionals who are now leaders in the field from across the world.

Teaching and learning

Teaching and learning methods are strongly guided by the UCL Connected Curriculum and emphasise active research-led learning with students conducting their own research activities, sharing knowledge between each other and learning through peer-to-peer activities. Considerable emphasis is placed on the value of the diversity and inclusivity of knowledge and on outward-facing knowledge production through connection to communities and practitioners beyond the academy.

The curriculum design is equally balanced around two general teaching and learning themes. These are conceptual/theoretical and design/engagement.

The conceptual/theoretical theme involves a critical and comprehensive exploration of transformative entrepreneurship (50% of the core modules), plus dissertation:

  • 'Transformative Entrepreneurship and Prosperity: Core Concepts'
  • 'Researching Transformative Entrepreneurship'
  • 'Dissertation'

The design/engagement theme involves design thinking and prototyping as well as engagement with practitioners, policymakers and entrepreneurial networks (50% of the core modules).

  • 'Transformative Entrepreneurship and Prosperity: Design'
  • 'Connected Innovation Project'

Teaching and learning methods/strategies involve:

  • Critical engagement with literature through seminars, guest lectures, in-depth discussion and exploring competing ideas.
  • Engagement with world-leading academics and non-academic practitioners through the departmental Director's Seminars and Soundbites.
  • Grounding core concepts and theories through teaching cases, and application of core concepts through learning-by-doing methods including prototyping and design to explore how theory and practice inform one another.
  • Enhancing student participation through flipped-learning methods and regular group assignments and activities.
  • Connecting to practice/industry through engagement with entrepreneurial leaders, as well as policymakers and practitioners, through tutorials, guest lectures, site visits and the Connected Innovation Project.

All modules contain a strong balance of formative, in-class exercises and peer to peer learning combined with a diversity of summative assessments. These are designed to allow you to progress across the course of each module and the programme as a whole and to allow students with diverse skills, abilities and interests to shine both within individual and group-based work. The structure of assessments also builds towards the Dissertation, which provides a key focus of the programme wherein you are able to develop your own substantial research project and contribution to knowledge.

In addition to academic skills and training, the programme will also provide you with a unique set of career and skills-enhancement sessions focused on developing the core abilities and capacities of students. These will be delivered through the existing Skills and Personal Development sessions run in the Institute for Global Prosperity in conjunction with the Global Prosperity MSc. These sessions are delivered by both internal specialists and external consultants and include:

  • Engagement with Public Policy.
  • Web-design and blogging.
  • Writing for the media.
  • Academic writing.
  • Presentation skills.
  • Film and audio media skills.
  • Personal leadership skills.
  • Mindfulness and study skills.
  • Careers advice.

The Institute for Global Prosperity also offers an award winning (Faculty Education Award 2018) series of Writing and Assessment Support Workshops designed to help you improve general writing skills and broader written structure and argument, tailored and timetabled to module assessments. As a student on this programme, you will be able to make use of these optional sessions.

The Programme involves various forms of assessment. They include:

  • Individual and group assignments, including case studies, essays, literature reviews, blog posts, and a transformative entrepreneurship design project.
  • Business model design and pitching.
  • Innovation project with external stakeholders.
  • Dissertation.

The programme consists of approximately 150 contact hours.

Modules

The Prosperity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship MSc is a one-year taught program that combines a range of class- and seminar-based teaching with practical research based student activities.

Full-time students will undertake the “Theory and Methods” modules ('Transformative Entrepreneurship and Prosperity: Core Concepts' and 'Researching Transformative Entrepreneurship') during Term 1 and “Design & Practice” ('Transformative Entrepreneurship and Prosperity: Design' and 'Connected Innovation Project') during Term 2, with a focus on the dissertation for the rest of the academic year.

You must also choose up to 30 credits of optional or elective modules.

In their first year, part-time students will need to take a minimum of 60 credits of modules. In the second year, you will take the remaining taught modules up to 30 credits, plus the dissertation (90 credits), for a maximum total of 120 credits.

Students must take 'Transformative Entrepreneurship and Prosperity: Core Concepts' ahead of 'Transformative Entrepreneurship and Prosperity: Design', and 'Researching Transformative Entrepreneurship' ahead of 'Connected Innovation Project'. We would also strongly encourage students to take the former Transformative Entrepreneurship modules ahead of the latter Methods and Practice modules.

Apart from the core modules, 30 credits of optional/elective modules will be distributed across the 2 years. The distribution of core and elective/optional modules should be discussed with the programme director ahead of initial enrolment.

Students undertaking Modular/flexible study may choose to organise the distribution of their modules flexibly across the five years provided they complete 180 credits by the end of year five.

Modular/flexible students must still enrol first on the Transformative Entrepreneurship modules in order ('Transformative Entrepreneurship and Prosperity: Core Concepts' and 'Transformative Entrepreneurship and Prosperity: Design'), followed by the research methods modules ('Researching Transformative Entrepreneurship' and 'Connected Innovation Project') also in their order.

Modular/flexible students are expected to have completed the majority of their taught modules before undertaking their dissertation.

30 credits of optional/elective modules will be distributed across the programme and chosen upon discussion with their personal tutor and/or programme director, subject to timetabling and availability.

Compulsory modules







Optional modules













Please note that the list of modules given here is indicative. This information is published a long time in advance of enrolment and module content and availability are subject to change. Modules that are in use for the current academic year are linked for further information. Where no link is present, further information is not yet available.

Students undertake modules to the value of 180 credits. Upon successful completion of 180 credits, you will be awarded an MSc in Prosperity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Fieldwork

Short, half-day field trips are a component of some of our modules.

Fieldwork related to your dissertation, both in the UK or elsewhere in the world, will need to be assessed in discussion with the Programme Leader and according to the circumstances at the time.

Placement

The Connected Innovation Project module allows you to work on a project in collaboration with a research team at the Institute for Global Prosperity or another external organisation. These are not conceptualised as a formal internship.

Accessibility

Details of the accessibility of UCL buildings can be obtained from AccessAble accessable.co.uk. Further information can also be obtained from the UCL Student Support and Wellbeing team.

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All open days and events

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Graduate Open Events: UCL Institute for Global Prosperity

Whether your ambition is to design better buildings, plan better cities, build sustainable communities or help meet the challenge of climate change, The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment could be a big step towards it. This session focuses on the Master's courses offered by IGP: Global Prosperity MSc, Prosperity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship MSc and Prosperity, People and Planet MSc.

Watch on demand event

Fees and funding

Fees for this course

UK students International students
Fee description Full-time Part-time
Tuition fees (2024/25) £19,300 £9,650
Tuition fees (2024/25) £31,100 £15,550

Programme also available on a modular (flexible) basis.

The tuition fees shown are for the year indicated above. Fees for subsequent years may increase or otherwise vary. Where the programme is offered on a flexible/modular basis, fees are charged pro-rata to the appropriate full-time Master's fee taken in an academic session. Further information on fee status, fee increases and the fee schedule can be viewed on the UCL Students website: ucl.ac.uk/students/fees.

Additional costs

There are no programme-specific additional costs. If you are concerned by potential additional costs for books, equipment, etc. on this programme, please get in touch with the Programme Administration (igp@ucl.ac.uk).

For more information on additional costs for prospective students please go to our estimated cost of essential expenditure at Accommodation and living costs.

Funding your studies

UCL offers a range of financial awards aimed at assisting both prospective and current students with their studies.

UCL East Scholarship

The scholarship works to support the ambitions of east Londoners by funding the fees and living costs of eligible Master's programmes including this MSc at UCL. Further details at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/scholarships/ucl-east-london-scholarship.

In our faculty, The Bartlett Promise Scholarship aims to enable students from backgrounds underrepresented in the built environment to pursue master's studies. Please see the UK Master's scholarship and Sub-Saharan Africa Master's scholarship pages for more information on eligibility criteria, selection process and FAQs.

Any additional funding available from the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity and the Built Environment Faculty Office are advertised on the respective websites.

For a comprehensive list of the funding opportunities available at UCL, including funding relevant to your nationality, please visit the Scholarships and Funding website.

See all the ways you can fund your studies

Bartlett Promise Sub-Saharan Africa Masters Scholarship

Deadline: 3 April 2024
Value: Fees, stipend and other allowances (Duration of programme)
Criteria Based on financial need
Eligibility: EU, Overseas

Bartlett Promise UK Master's Scholarship

Deadline: 31 May 2024
Value: Tuition fees plus £15,364 maintenance/yr (Duration of programme)
Criteria Based on financial need
Eligibility: UK

Commonwealth Shared Scholarship Scheme (CSSS)

Deadline: 14 December 2023
Value: Full fees, flights, stipend, and other allowances (1 year)
Criteria Based on both academic merit and financial need
Eligibility: EU, Overseas

Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) Equity Fund

Deadline: 30 June 2024
Value: £5,000 towards fees (1yr)
Criteria Based on both academic merit and financial need
Eligibility: UK

UCL East London Scholarship

Deadline: 20 June 2024
Value: Tuition fees plus £15,700 stipend ()
Criteria Based on financial need
Eligibility: UK

Next steps

Students are advised to apply as early as possible due to competition for places. Those applying for scholarship funding (particularly overseas applicants) should take note of application deadlines.

There is an application processing fee for this programme of £90 for online applications and £115 for paper applications. Further information can be found at Application fees.

Your application must consist of both a personal statement and a CV. We place considerable emphasis on your personal statement and how you have tailored this for your application to the Prosperity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship MSc. Generic or template-style personal statements will not be strong enough for admission. Statements that do not fully engage with aspects of the degree programme will also be unlikely to succeed. We particularly value personal statements that outline a clear vision for transformative change and directly explain how the degree programme will help you realise the changes you would like to see happen. We also encourage students to explain how their past experiences have directly led them to this degree programme and to outline how the skills and knowledge they have acquired will help them to realise their goals for transformation.

When we assess your application we would like to learn:

  • Why you want to study Prosperity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at graduate level.
  • Why you want to study Prosperity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at IGP and UCL.
  • What particularly attracts you to this programme.
  • How your academic and professional background meets the demands of this challenging programme.
  • How you can make a unique contribution to our innovative academic community.
  • How you see this degree programme leading to a future transformative career.

Together with essential academic requirements, the personal statement is your opportunity to illustrate whether your reasons for applying to this programme match what the programme will deliver. Please note that the programme is not a standard business, economics or development studies programme (though it contains elements of each of these). The programme aims to address major challenges in our current social, economic and environmental conditions, and students are encouraged to consider how they would work to contribute to addressing such challenges.

We advise applicants to upload any supporting documents related to research, work experience, extracurricular activities or other projects mentioned in the personal statement or CV.

Please note that you may submit applications for a maximum of two graduate programmes (or one application for the Law LLM) in any application cycle.

Choose your programme

Please read the Application Guidance before proceeding with your application.

Year of entry: 2024-2025

Apply for this course

Got questions? Get in touch

Institute for Global Prosperity
Institute for Global Prosperity

igp@ucl.ac.uk

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