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Creating a Sustainable Business among South Africa's Poor 'One Bite at
a Time'
Certifiably Entrepreneurial
WEP Teams up
with Wharton Executive Education to Create New Certificate Program.
An adult-education program is bringing Wharton’s internationally recognized expertise in entrepreneurship to a new group of students.
The Wharton Programs for Working Professionals’ (WPWP) entrepreneurship certificate will give working adults from the Philadelphia region and abroad an introduction to the basics of both business and entrepreneurship.
The six-course program, which is open to students who have completed a bachelor’s degree, includes classes in accounting, finance, marketing, management, new product management and new business ventures. The ventures class will culminate with the students writing a business plan for a startup.
"It’s modeled on our MBA business plan writing class," says Clare Leinweber, senior associate director of Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs. "The goal of the program is that students interested in starting a business can leave ready to do that," she adds.
Each class lasts 16 weeks, and students can take two at a time, making it possible to complete the program in three semesters. Students also can enroll in two additional workshops at the Wharton Small Business Development Center.
The program grew out of conversations between Leinweber and Claudia Lewis, WPWP’s director. Lewis approached Leinweber, a graduate of WPWP’s Business Essentials certificate program, about whether WEP might be interested in partnering to create a curriculum. WPWP hadn’t previously offered any courses in entrepreneurship, but Lewis was convinced that it should.
"We have these regular information sessions for prospective students where we have Q&A," she says. "One question people would always ask was, ‘Do you guys have anything on entrepreneurship, and I’d have to say no. I hated having to respond that way."
Plus, Lewis had a hunch that an unserved pool of students existed among the employees of mid-sized companies and larger entrepreneurial firms in the Philadelphia region. "A lot of people who come to study with us are in transition in one way or another," she explains. "They’re looking for new opportunities within their companies or to move up."
In an economy increasingly driven by entrepreneurship and innovation, the sort of knowledge included in the curriculum should help them. "It’s the only adult-education program that I’m aware of that offers deep-dive courses in business essentials and adds to that the opportunity to participate in workshops specific to entrepreneurs," she says.
The program began accepting its first students this summer, and demand has exceeded expectations. "People seem to think it’s exactly what they need to either grow their business or start one," says Kimberly Guyer, WPWP’s associate director.
Dan Johnson was among the first people to enroll. A graduate of WPWP’s accounting-and-finance certificate program, he fits the student profile that Lewis imagined. An information-technology administrator in a financial firm, he aimed to round out his business knowledge.
"I wanted to be able to speak the languages of both IT and business," he says. "Software developers don’t usually understand what the business side is trying to accomplish, so there’s often a lot of pushing back and forth."
He found the finance-and-accounting program beneficial and figured that the entrepreneurship courses would be just as good. "Wharton has a great name, and I knew that the quality of the professors would be better than anywhere else," he says. Plus, he would like to pursue an MBA but, as a Spanish major in college, didn’t have a strong background in the subject matter. WPWP’s programs are giving him a chance to explore his interest and beef up his knowledge of the sort of material he might cover as an MBA student.
The entrepreneurship certificate also made sense because he and several friends have launched an IT consultancy. "We’re just starting out, and I need to learn how to manage my friends. We sometimes butt heads about that. So it’s for me to learn to be a better manager, too."
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Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs