SBS Blog > Preparing for an innovative career by Beyza Baran

Preparing for an innovative career

By Beyza Baran - Posted on 18 July 2019

With an eye to a career in innovation centres, Beyza Baran embarked on the MSc EIT programme to help improve her knowledge and skills. Here she explains what she got out of the programme.

I was working at EGE University EBILTEM Technology Transfer Office before joining the MSc in Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology (EIT) programme. I was engaged in a variety of commercial activities that are meant to facilitate the process of bringing research developments to market, acting as a channel between academia and industry. I was also a co-founder of a start-up called Remoris oral health technologies at Ege University incubation centre.

I knew I wanted to have a career working in technology and innovation centres to help people commercialise their technologies, assist their start-ups to grow and guide them in design and innovation but I needed to improve my knowledge and develop my skills at an academic level so I applied for the MSc in EIT.

The programme offers a great opportunity to improve leadership skills in a realistic environment. The programme covers all aspects of creating a new enterprise or helping an existing enterprise to go from ideation to market and from market to growth. The programme also teaches how to generate business plans and find new ventures; it provides innovative ideas to solve a problem, identify and assess business opportunities and practice entrepreneurship with realistic, holistic market-based strategies.

The focal point for enterprise education is not just about how to build your own business but also how to run your business, how to evaluate your growth strategy, how to manage human capital, how to handle figures and investments and, most importantly, how to be a good leader for your business. It also focuses on intrapreneurial activities and the skills needed to promote innovative product development and marketing within a company.

This year I’ve been involved in external events with the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship such as the Start-Up Summit and Entrepreneurial Scotland which have helped me understand the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Scotland and presented a great opportunity to network with companies and start-ups. The guest speakers invited by the department helped us picture the general perspective of the entrepreneur in Scotland.

My thoughts on my career path have been helped by the MSc. I’m keen on working with SMEs and start-ups. During the programme we worked with local SMEs and start-ups in terms of their growth, operations and business strategy. I discovered how much I enjoy helping companies via consultancy and I am still in contact with them, supporting them voluntarily to contribute to their growth planning.

I’d like to continue my career in an innovation centre and use my entrepreneurship skills to solve problems for new enterprises and offer innovative ideas to support the organisations to improve and grow.

For more information on the MSc Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology, please click here