Good management used to be measured by how well you kept things running. That’s still part of the job, but how much of the job it accounts for has changed.
Every day, across industries, managers face complex challenges with innovative solutions. Skills traditionally associated with startup founders, like resilience, opportunity recognition and adaptability, are now part of a mindset that’s increasingly relevant to any modern manager. As the global business landscape evolves, so too has the definition of entrepreneurship.
If you’re a recent graduate or a professional looking to pivot, building these skills early can give you a decisive advantage in an increasingly complex business landscape.
Management used to be about maintaining the status quo, but that’s changed. The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Future of Jobs Report estimates that 39% of the skills the job market needs today will have changed by 2030. Hiring for a role that will look different in five years changes what you look for. A specific tool or process matters less than skills that outlast industry changes.
Organizations still need managers with solid business skills. They also need people who’ll experiment, recognize an opening and change direction when the situation calls for it. In practice, that means running a department a bit like a startup. Thanks to the complexity industries are facing today, entrepreneurial thinking has quickly become a must-have, not a nice-to-have, for anyone in management.
AI is speeding up the shift. Software now handles many traditional parts of a manager’s job, like pulling numbers together and chasing handoffs between teams. What’s left for a human to handle are judgment calls, including deciding which problems are worth solving and what to do when data is scarce.
“Entrepreneurial thinking ensures that in the age of AI, people lead change rather than be led by it. It’s not confined to startups. It’s the mindset that distinguishes outstanding leaders and managers in every organization, small or large.” – Dmitri Shuster, Program Director
A city like New York gives you more exposure to this than most places. The metro area drew $28.5 billion in venture capital in 2024, second only to Silicon Valley. That much money keeps companies moving. Companies build, restructure and rebuild teams around new products, often in the same year. So managers here spend less time maintaining a set system and more time working out what the system should be.
Knowing the skills you need to be an impactful manager is one thing, but what does this look like in practice? When you’re managing a team or trying to drive transformation in your organization, how does entrepreneurial thinking make a difference?
Leaders need to be able to spot opportunities where others see only problems. When a client account starts slipping, the standard response is to find the fault and fix it. The entrepreneurial leader fixes it, then checks whether the same thing is happening in three other accounts. A pattern like that points to a product problem rather than a service one. It means watching the day-to-day while noticing the shift underneath it.
When you see an opportunity, you need to have the courage to act, even if the path forward isn’t crystal clear. That means making decisions when the data is incomplete. You leverage what you do know, experiment with different options and course-correct based on what you learn. Say your team notices a gap in a competitor’s offering. You decide based on what you have and hedge your bet, so being wrong only costs a month instead of a year.
Constraints are where decent ideas can die. If your budget request comes back cut in half, the standard response is a memo explaining what can no longer be delivered. The entrepreneurial one is a smaller version of the plan that lets you test your idea with the resources you already have.
Not everything will work. Resilience is what lets you extract useful information from your setbacks and start again without losing momentum. Rather than being put off by failures, you’ll keep moving. As a leader, you also create a culture where smart failure is acceptable and mistakes become lessons.
Innovation usually requires a range of expertise and buy-in from different stakeholders. Roadblocks come with the territory. A stakeholder approves an idea in principle, and then it gets stuck for six weeks in finance or legal. Each department has its own priorities and risks to manage. The manager who takes the time to find out what those are can build relationships, sell ideas internally and work across silos.
Building this mindset requires making decisions that carry real consequences. If you’re a student or a first-time manager, you may not have made those decisions yet. Or you may fear that getting them wrong will damage your career.
Look for opportunities to take charge of something small. Running the budget for a student club, managing the sponsorships for a small conference or taking on a project for a local nonprofit will put you in charge of critical decisions without needing a manager title. To find them, though, you have to be bold, ask around and do some unglamorous work.
At work, unclaimed problems make great openings. Think of a handoff between two teams that keeps creating friction, or an unhelpful weekly report. These problems rarely sit in anyone’s job description, which is exactly why taking one on draws attention. Early in your career, your biggest constraint is trust, so start small: make a proposal to fix something, tell people what you changed and why and let the result prove your argument.
If you’re worried about being wrong, choose problems where the decision can be reversed and tell your manager what you’re testing before you implement it. Expect some discomfort either way. Handling that is another important skill to develop.
Feedback is a step many people skip. If nobody tells you where your reasoning went wrong, you’ll make the same mistake later on. Find one person who’ll be honest with you and ask them to go through your decision process, not just the result. Good decisions sometimes miss the mark and poor ones sometimes go well, so it’s worth double-checking your thought process.
In today’s business landscape, future-ready managers can’t treat entrepreneurial thinking as optional. The way you approach problems and identify opportunities will shape your career more than your ability to interpret data or read a balance sheet. By building your entrepreneurial mindset early, you’ll be better prepared to navigate through uncertainty and lead with confidence in an unpredictable world.
Graduate study is one way to easily gain access to this training. Look for programs built around real projects and case work. The best ones give you direct, specific feedback from professors and peers. If you’re looking to develop an entrepreneurial mindset, the MS in Management at IENYC is built around practical, real-world work in the city where it matters most.
Entrepreneurial thinking in management means approaching your role as a founder would when starting a business. You spot opportunities, test ideas quickly and adapt when something doesn’t work.
An entrepreneur fully owns a company’s risks and benefits. An entrepreneurial manager works inside an organization that already has customers, budgets and rules. Constraints are tighter there, and persuasion matters more.
Yes, you can. The most effective options are anything where you set the direction and someone else feels the outcome. That can include running a club, a defined project at a nonprofit or freelance work.
It tends to show up as questions about a time you made a decision without enough information, a failed project and what you took from it or how you won over a team outside your own. Prepare examples where you can explain your reasoning at the time, including the parts you got wrong.
It depends on how much exposure you get to data analysis and consequential decision-making. Someone running a demanding project for six months will build it more quickly than someone spending three years in a role with no influence.
SHARE THIS POST
Originally from New Orleans, Louisiana, Ashleigh now calls Madrid, Spain home, where she has built a career shaped by curiosity, creativity, and a lifelong love of languages. Her work grows out of a passion for learning, storytelling, and meaningful cross-cultural connection, with language as the thread that ties it all together.
Her academic journey took her from studying Spanish and French and Secondary Education at the University of Southern Mississippi to graduate studies in Spain, where she completed a Master’s in Spanish at the University of Salamanca and a Master’s in Translation and Interpretation at the University of Alcalá. Along the way, she has worked across classrooms, research projects, and creative spaces, contributing to academic, multilingual, and editorial initiatives that connect language, knowledge, and culture.
