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Regent University is a Christian Institution Offering Undergraduate, Graduate, and Doctoral Degrees Located in Virginia Beach, VA 23464

A New Degree for Designing Businesses and Innovating Products

Entrepreneurs who enjoy designing businesses and innovating products, or those who wish to work for forward-thinking companies, will find a new degree program tailored to their interests at Regent. It will be offered online to students starting Fall 2016. Regent University’s School of Business & Leadership (SBL) is introducing a Master of Arts (M.A.) in Business & Design Management (MABDM). Requiring fewer credit hours than a Master of Business Administration (MBA), the new program will cater to young, early-career entrepreneurs who work as product managers or plan to start their own businesses.

“The M.A. in Business & Design Management is a ‘doing’ degree,” said Dr. Gary Oster, program director of the new MABDM degree. “The skills that were important to successfully lead an enterprise a decade ago are largely insufficient to guide a start-up venture or forward-thinking company. Traditional companies are organization and process focused, whereas new economy enterprises are intensely customer-experience driven. That’s why we developed this powerful and unique program.”

The MABDM requires 33 credit hours through courses in innovation, prototyping, consumer behavior, and the development of products and services. It’s designed to help graduates work in a dynamic and highly competitive marketplace and is offered exclusively online. The new degree utilizes design-thinking and works directly with customers in the development of new products and services.

The program was developed over two years, and building on courses currently offered in the MBA, Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership (MOL), and Master of Arts in Communication, but with an emphasis on product development. For example, while the MBA offers managerial economics, the new M.A. will offer an entrepreneurial economics course that will equip those involved in funding start-ups or product development. The M.A.’s courses will focus on the key steps require to produce new products and services.

“Not only are they practical, but they’re taught differently than traditional business courses,” said Oster. “It’s much more of a doing program, and students will have hands-on projects they’ll have to accomplish on their own or with others. It’s less lecturing and reading, and a lot more community interaction like interviewing prospective customers, build prototypes and get feedback.”

The online program will help students around the world connect with entrepreneurial resources within their home communities. Students may attend hands-on workshops at Regent’s Virginia Beach campus.

Learn more about the SBL.