Minors
Entrepreneurship
School of Business and Economics
This minor provides fundamental knowledge about what it takes to transform creative ideas into successful business ventures. Specifically, the minor will allow you to better appreciate different forms of entrepreneurship across different contexts, understand the unique challenges faced by entrepreneurs, and find creative solutions for overcoming these challenges. This knowledge is extremely valuable for any student, because career success increasingly requires that you are proactive, promote change, and pursue new entrepreneurial initiatives that create economic and/or social value.
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Sustainability: Global challenges, interdisciplinary solutions
Faculty of Science
Sustainability is the grand challenge of our time. This grand challenge urgently calls for the next generation of leaders that move beyond the classical focus on biophysical, economic or societal limits towards interdisciplinary and solution-oriented knowledge, providing realistic, context-specific pathways to a sustainable future. This minor aims to engage students from all backgrounds in issues of sustainability by making them acquainted to the three dimensions of sustainability (i.e. People, Planet, Prosperity) and challenging them to design and develop solutions within their own field of interest (i.e. energy, climate, water, waste, nature, food security). Students are encouraged to step outside of their personal mono-disciplinary comfort zone and learn about the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in the three pillars of sustainability. The students will learn how to identify and combine planetary opportunities that address the grand challenge from other disciplines, into innovative solutions for a more sustainable world.
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Understanding and influencing decisions in business and society
School of Business and Economics
This minor will allow you to understand and influence human decision making and choice, based on recent insights from behavioral economics and psychology.
Upon completion of this minor, you will be able to understand how people make decisions and how they are influenced by the situation around them. Based on this knowledge, you will learn to develop interventions to influence behaviour of others (through nudging and social influence tactics) in order to achieve societal and business goals, such as increasing sustainable behaviour, a healthier lifestyle or boost company sales. Through historical and every day examples of leadership you will learn to improve (your own) leadership skills and the related output of teams and organisations. Furthermore, you will learn to formulate more effective negotiation strategies. Finally, you will discuss the ethical aspects of such influence strategies.
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Business analytics
Faculty of Science
To be optimally prepared for the master programme Business Analytics you can choose the minor Business Analytics and Data Science. This minor offers courses that deepen your understanding of Data Science.
The minor Business Analytics and Data Science enables you to gain more in-depth knowledge in the field of Business Analytics. You will learn numerous new skills, such as analysing and improving algorithm performances, but also the optimisation of logistic services and the retrieval of valuable knowledge from large amounts of data. During the minor you will work on several projects, a unique opportunity to gain more practical expertise as well
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Masters
Science, Business and Innovation
2 years
Successfully introducing scientific knowledge and inventions into the market is a complex process in which science and business cooperate to the fullest extent at each stage of development. Are you curious about how to integrate both the scientific and the business side of innovations? Do you want to play a crucial part in determining the economic success of innovations? Then the Science, Business & Innovation (SBI) Master at VU Amsterdam is the programme for you.
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Business analytics
2 years
In today’s data driven world, organisations need expert judgement and sharp analysis to ensure they make the right decisions. Business Analytics enables you to harness the power of data science, big data, statistics and machine learning to optimize results and achieve strategic objectives.
Your ability to combine insights from mathematics, computer science and economics with highly developed quantitative and communication skills will make you key to the success of any organization. The Master’s programme will deepen your knowledge in these areas and give you the opportunity to specialize in computational intelligence, business process optimization, and financial risk management. The Master’s degree is concluded with a six-month individual internship at a company, which is often the first step to a thriving international career.
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Business administration
1 year
A bank and an insurance company. Two businesses in the same sector. Just like a shipper and a haulier. What do they have in common, and what are the differences? How do they complement each other? And why are some more successful than others? If you are curious about the ins and outs of this ‘game’, about the companies active in business services and about the people who work for them, then Business Administration is the Master’s programme for you.
Because business services is a very wide-ranging industry, so too is this degree. You engage in in-depth analysis of companies from a variety of sectors. You specialize in specific business processes. And you make use of know-how drawn from information technology, economics and the social sciences.
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