Annie Lindmark

My name is Annie Lindmark and I was enrolled in the Master's Programme in Entrepreneurship. I chose this programme because I have always felt very passionate about the area entrepreneurship and innovation and I’m drawn to disruptive projects that have the ability to turn the status quo upside down. I think that it is the entrepreneurs that will have the ability to change the world and who are the ones that will build tomorrow’s companies and affect our way of living in the future.

I decided to write my thesis about intrapreneurship (entrepreneurship within existing organisations) and how to trigger innovation through employees’ engagement, something I see as very interesting and important, especially for larger companies, in order to stay competitive in a very fast changing environment. I can also see the importance in understanding new generations and knowing what they want out of a job and an employer today and even more in the future. A lot of studies show that having a job which stimulates employees’ entrepreneurial skills will just continue to grow and get more important, which makes this field even more interesting and important. 

I choose Uppsala University due to its history of being one of Sweden’s best and most honorable universities but also due to its great professors. Another important factor for me was the university’s way of working close to the student unions and the student nations in order to make the time as a student as enjoyable and inspiring as possible.

The best thing about my Master’s programme was the great mixture between academic and practical work. Studying a field as entrepreneurship means that you need to apply it to reality and put it in its context in order to really understand and learn it, which I really felt that we had to do during this programme. I also appreciated that it was a programme full of seminars, case discussions and reflective sessions. We all really had the chance to express our thoughts and ideas during this programme.

The different courses could differ a lot, meaning that one day we could have rhetoric’s class and needed to pitch for the whole group, another day we worked with a real company and their business case. Most of the courses did contain a lot of reading and especially case studies, which we thereafter prepared and brought to the class seminars. I felt that I learned so many new things each and every class and a lot of it was due to the time we got to reflect and summarise our own thoughts on the topic.

The atmosphere at this programme was filled with joy, inspiration and warmth. I could really feel that we had an open and honest environment and that everyone was engaged in the discussions that we had. On campus I felt a constant pulse and that there always were things to do and get involved in. 

Today I work as a management partner and an innovation expert at the corporate side of Nordea. I get to work with our entrepreneurial collaborations, our start up investments and internal innovation platform, it is a lot of fun and days filled with new challenges and opportunities!

My advice to prospective future students is to really be open minded, think outside the box, speak up and be involved in the class discussion. You will get so much out of this programme if you are engaged and interested in the field. 

Read more about the Master's programme in Entrepreneurship