Becoming Entrepreneurial: Purpose, Paths, and Inspiration

Program Experience

Highlights and Key Outcomes

This course teaches an inclusive, research-based approach to entrepreneurship as value creation through innovation. By the end of the course, you will be able to:

• Apply a broad, inclusive definition of entrepreneurship that encompasses ventures, intrapreneurship, acquisition, investing, and social impact, and recognize how each creates value in different contexts
• Connect your skills, values, leadership style, and risk preferences to one or more pathways that fit your goals and circumstances
• Identify the resources, relationships, and experiences you can leverage to move your ideas forward
• Use the Six Rs (Reason, Recombination, Relationships, Resources, Resilience, and Results) to think and act like an entrepreneur in real-world situations
• Design small, low-risk experiments to test ideas, gather feedback, and build momentum
• Cultivate habits of curiosity, reflection, resilience, and ongoing learning that support long-term entrepreneurial growth

Experience and Impact

Delivered fully online and self-paced, this course features four in-depth modules (approximately four to six hours each). You’ll move through a blend of video lectures, guided workbook reflections, applied activities, and optional challenge exercises that help you immediately connect concepts to your own goals, career, or venture.

Rather than just taking in information, you’ll actively:

• Reflect on your past experiences to discover where you’ve already behaved entrepreneurially
• Explore diverse entrepreneurial stories across industries, demographics, and stages of life, and relate them to your own context
• Build a portfolio of insights and action steps that culminate in a capstone project tailored to your chosen pathway

By the end, you won’t just understand entrepreneurship differently — you’ll have language, tools, and next steps you can use right away.

Certificate Pathway

This is the first of three courses that comprise Wharton Online’s Entrepreneurship Certificate. The certificate is earned by completing all three:

• Course 1: Becoming Entrepreneurial: Purpose, Paths, and Inspiration
• Course 2: From Idea to Impact: Entrepreneurial Opportunity Identification
• Course 3: From Plan to Performance: Venture Implementation

Each course may be taken individually, but together they form a comprehensive progression — from building an entrepreneurial mindset and understanding your path, to identifying and validating opportunities, to implementing ventures through teams, boards, investors, and partners.

Completing all three courses not only deepens your entrepreneurial capabilities; it also earns you the Entrepreneurship Certificate, recognizing your ability to move from inspiration to opportunity to implementation.

Tuition

The tuition for this course is $1,350. You can also enroll in the full three-course Entrepreneurship Certificate at a bundled rate, gaining access to the entire pathway and the recognized Wharton credential.

Attend as a Team. Amplify the Impact.

Wharton Executive Education offers group-enrollment benefits for organizations sending four or more participants. Learn More »