Curriculum
Core Courses
View all core courses below:
Strategy of Innovation
Whether an organization innovates determines whether it survives. It does not take a world-wide crisis for an organization to realize that the status quo will not be sufficient. And it is not only the multi-national corporations like Amazon that need to innovate, it is the restaurant at the corner, the local charity, and even national governments see the need for innovation. The question is not whether to innovate, but how.
In this course you learn why organizations struggle to innovate and what to do about it. The course is organized around three broad questions such that each question will be addressed in a specific module:
- How can organizations generate value?
- How can organizations capture the value that they generate?
- How can organizations and managers deliver value?
Taught by Dr H. Klapper
Organisation of Innovation
Generation, recognition, adoption and sharing of innovation is certainly a challenge for every organization, but creating an organizational structure that enables an organization to continuously innovate is also an equally, or even more, daunting task. This course will introduce the central challenges and available solutions to organize innovation activities.
Central topics encompass the processes by which innovation is generated, idea generation, theories of organization of innovation, organizing in service organizations, innovation networks, and organizational design in start-ups also through prototypes. The theoretical knowledge will be supported with case studies, skill development activities and guest speakers with whom the student will have the unique opportunity to discuss and share their opinion.
Taught by Dr. S. Tasselli.
Design Thinking
People often prepare long and detailed business plans when they want to implement new ideas. This takes a lot of time and resources and since customer preferences can change pretty quickly, a business plan might be obsolete by the time it is done. How can you approach innovation in a more flexible and agile way and develop innovations that are truly customer-centric?
During this course, you will learn how to shift your mindset and embrace a different approach to developing new products, services and processes. Using design thinking to develop innovations will help you to see the value of an offering from a customer’s perspective. This structured approach means empathizing with the user to match their real needs, and stimulates creativity and innovation. You will learn to define, interpret, and reframe problems, and how to involve others in your project. You will focus on iterative solutions to get to a final product through prototyping and trial and error.
Taught by Dr D. Deichmann.
Implementing Innovations
New products, services and business models are generally implemented through projects. In this course students will have a “hands-on” experience in which they will plan and execute one of such projects. The goal of the course project is to transform an innovative idea into a tangible product. During the class sessions and through the course activities, students will be able to discuss concepts and theories that will allow reflecting on their work and help them improve their team’s project.
The course is divided in four different modules. The first module focuses on providing students with the basic tools for setting up and starting the execution of the project. The second module focuses on the management of the parties involved in a project, the project team and other stakeholders. The third module focuses on the discussion of risk management and project governance as mechanisms of project control. Lastly, in the fourth module, the course discussion assumes a critical perspective on project management practices and explores why projects fail and how to overcome those failures.
Taught by Dr J.P. Madiedo.
Medical Innovation
New digital technologies are changing the patient journey and healthcare processes. These changes force healthcare organizations to develop new strategies and organizational culture to breed innovations. Furthermore, the they require an ecosystem where different stakeholders can collaborate. Therefore, digitalization of healthcare entails not only the development of new digital technologies, but also the digital transformation of the healthcare ecosystem.
Digital transformation in healthcare requires convergence and cross-polinitation across people from different backgrounds and organizations working together. Achieving the transformation goals, calls for a common language for all stakeholders involved in healthcare.
This course includes several modules that can empower future researchers, physicians, data scientists, and engineers for multidisciplinary collaborations in the context of digital transformation in healthcare. Participants will have also the opportunity to broaden their network by getting to know the experts in from different fields.
Taught by Maarten IJzerman
Intellectual Property
Since the development and market authorization of novel medical devices and medicines require substantial funding, Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) play an important role in the development, acceptance and use of (medical) innovations. Patents, databases, trademarks and designs enable a legal basis for the appropriation and commercialization of scientific knowledge allowing inventors, innovators, companies and their investors to secure a market position, thereby recouping earlier investments in the stages of Research, Development and Manufacturing.
With guest-speakers from industry, regulators as well as the Technology Transfer Office, the role of IPRs in device and medicine development is clearly laid out with casestudies from daily practice during the course.
The contents will focus on:
a.) the process of using technical and market information from patent documents in the design of devices and development of medicines
b.) patent application routes for the development and commercialization of medical innovations as explained by experts from different fields.
Throughout the course, participants will acquire IP-management knowledge as well as tools to use IP-assets in the commercialization of scientific results aimed to alleviate unmet medical needs in society.
Examination will comprise of both an individual and group assignment.
Course coordinators: Peter van Dongen (Netherlands Patent Office, RVO) and John Vlot (Erasmus MC)
Electives
- Entrepreneurial Lab
- Digital Transformation in Healthcare
- Healthcare Procurement & Value Chain Management
- Circular Economy: Strategies & Business Models
Digital Transformation in Healthcare
New digital technologies are changing the patient journey and healthcare processes. These changes force healthcare organizations to develop new strategies and organizational culture to breed innovations. Furthermore, the they require an ecosystem where different stakeholders can collaborate. Therefore, digitalization of healthcare entails not only the development of new digital technologies, but also the digital transformation of the healthcare ecosystem.
Digital transformation in healthcare requires convergence and cross-polinitation across people from different backgrounds and organizations working together. Achieving the transformation goals, calls for a common language for all stakeholders involved in healthcare. Accordingly, the course will bring together faculty and students from Erasmus MC, Rotterdam School of Management, and TU Delft.
This course includes several modules that can empower future researchers, physicians, data scientists, and engineers for multidisciplinary collaborations in the context of digital transformation in healthcare. Participants will have also the opportunity to broaden their network by getting to know the experts in from different fields.
Review the course guide for more details.
Taught by dr. A. Abarghouei
Entrepreneurial Lab
If you want to know more about developing a business model for a startup and/or setting up your own venture, the Entrepreneurial Lab course is for you. Within an intense and hand-on experiential approach, the Entrepreneurial Lab course allows you exploring a business opportunity with your team and testing its potential value.
This course provides advanced master students with a practical, yet rigorous understanding of the role, the analytics, and the process of business planning that leads to the successful creation of new ventures. Above all, students will be responsible to develop their own professional networks. As it’s a hands-on course, you will learn about business modelling, how to refine opportunities, analyse feasibility, financial planning, and organisational implementation. You will write a weekly blog and a business report and pitch your idea to a jury of experts. In previous years our students launched successful new businesses, including Senz Umbrellas, Symbid and Yoursurprise.com.
Working with other MSc SE students as a team you will develop your own business; practical experience of the process means you gain a thorough understanding of the role played by planning in the successful creation of new ventures, and you’ll have personal experience of the analytical processes that take place.
Review the course guide for more details.
Taught by Dr L. Berchicci.
Healthcare Procurement & Value Chain Management
In this course we will focus on the procurement process and on value chain management in the healthcare sector. In many countries, healthcare represents one of the largest sectors of the economy; healthcare spend often amounts to 10% of a country’s GDP. This course builds on the key concepts as taught in the core course Purchasing & Supply Management (BM05SCM). This course expands into areas that are not only relevant in healthcare, but also in other sectors, such as services triads, performance-based contracting, best value procurement, European tendering, cooperative purchasing, and negotiation skills.
In healthcare value chains two types of purchasing can be distinguished: purchasing of healthcare and purchasing for healthcare. In purchasing of healthcare, which is done by for instance healthcare insurers, ‘healthcare’ is the service that is purchased. In purchasing for healthcare a diverse set of goods and services is purchased (e.g. catering, temporary labour and medical equipment).
A significant amount of money is spent in the healthcare industry on a yearly basis, which makes that there is a large potential for the purchasing profession to decrease spend, improve quality and increase innovation as well as efficiency. In this course we connect management theory about purchasing with specific characteristics of the healthcare industry.
Taught by Prof. E. van Raaij.
Circular Economy
Circular Economy has rapidly become a buzzword, but it is not always clear how it should affect corporations, organizations, or society as a whole.
This course aims to bring conceptual clarity and develop practical knowledge of circular solutions. The Circular Economy is then explored from both an applied and theoretical perspective while looking at strategies, foundational ideas, and business models. Several examples and case studies will illustrate different views on the Circular Economy, including barriers and enabling conditions.
The course consists of in-class lectures, some of which given by guest lecturers from the government or innovative companies, as well as three assignments: An in-class group presentation and short group report– both based on real business cases – and an individual report.
Taught by P. Moreseletto.
Research Methods & Thesis
- Research Fundamentals
Career training
The aim of the course ‘Your Future Career’ is to prepare RSM students at an early stage in their master's for their careers.
The online modules will help you make crucial steps towards the most suitable career step, whether an internship or a job.
To pass the course, you need to gain a minimum number of points within a few months. You can decide if you want to reflect on your interests and motivations, develop knowledge of the job market, receive peer feedback on application materials, learn to love networking, or attend an interactive alumni career panel or workshop.
See this page for more details.
This course is overseen and guided by Dr Maciej Szymanowski and Lisanne Keir.
Note regarding taking courses if you are not an RSM master student: RSM does not offer the possibility for non-RSM students (master or otherwise) to take RSM MSc courses outside of official exchange partnerships or other inter-faculty agreements. If you are interested in learning more about corporate social responsibility, sustainability, or business ethics, please refer to our Open Programmes section.
For more information on all international opportunities offered at RSM, visit the website of our International Office.
Learn more
Why this programme?
Factsheet
International exchange
Career opportunities
Are you ready to accelerate technological advances and development towards personalised precision medicine? This one-year programme is an important steppingstone to pursue your career in the growing sector of medical business and innovation. After the master programme, you will be ready for various career options, for example as product manager in a life science or medical technology company, medical entrepreneur, R&D manager in the healthcare industry, technology transfer manager, laboratory manager, or medical industry consultant.
Studying at RSM
The RSM Experience
Education for life
Studying at RSM will be a life-changing experience. Your master degree will prepare you for a fulfilling professional life as a capable, self-assured individual. It will make you valuable to business and attractive to employers because it teaches you skills that make the most of your innovative mind. You will be challenged in and outside of the classroom, and you will gain an education based on the latest developments in business. Your master degree from RSM will include RSM’s promise of life-long learning, and membership of the more than 40,000-strong alumni network that is present in more than 110 countries which hosts activities and events all over the world.
Open intellectual culture
Your education at RSM is valuable. You will learn from academics who produce the highest quality research and the most innovative management thinking. In the classroom, sharing and questioning opinions is encouraged – yours and those of your fellow students, as well as the professors’. Many of RSM’s faculty members are young and passionate professors and researchers with outstanding academic credentials. Their work is published in top international management journals.
Engaging environment
Professors’ doors are always open for students who have questions, projects or ideas. Depending on the study programme, students have different opportunities to tailor their programme. This can, for example, take the form of a minors course, an internship, an exchange at one of over 160 partner schools worldwide, elective choices, the participation in a consulting project with a company or public sector organisation, or a thesis project in their specific area of interest. RSM’s strong links with local and international businesses and organisations offer opportunities for practical projects and real-life collaborations.
What is your ‘I WILL’?
RSM’s I WILL movement allows you to define your goals, your ambition, your drive. It’s our forward-thinking community that asks you to say something about your future. Your I WILL statement becomes part of the spirit of RSM’s diverse community of students, researchers, staff, professors, alumni and others related to the school. Making a public commitment to your goal will allow you to achieve it faster and better. What is your goal?
Rotterdam, a future-oriented city
Living and studying in Rotterdam has never been better. Rotterdam is home to one of the largest and busiest ports in the world and many multinational companies have their headquarters here. The city is famous for its stunning modern architecture, such as the Centraal Station or its covered food market, the Markthal. At the same time, the city authorities are forward-thinking in improving its liveability. There’s no shortage of restaurants, museums and theatres, yet Rotterdam is still an extremely student-friendly city with plenty of affordable student housing, and a bustling nightlife that includes events organised by students associations.
Find out more about life in the city of Rotterdam.
More information
Explore the campus
Life in the city
Coming from abroad
Fees & scholarships
The 2024-2025 tuition fee for the MSc programmes is approximately €22,500 for non-EEA students. The Dutch government contributes towards this cost for students who hold a nationality from a country belonging to the European Economic Area(EEA). These students therefore only pay the statutory fee €2,530 in 2024-2025.
For EEA nationals who have already completed a master in the Netherlands (and obtained the diploma) the tuition fee for a 2nd master is approximately €13,200.
Please note that all these tuition fee tariffs are subject to change.
Scholarships
The number of scholarships is limited and mainly merit based. If a scholarship covers only the tuition fees, be aware that you need to finance your own living expenses (rent, food and insurances) for the duration of your studies. RSM does not offer scholarships for the pre-master programme. We do however offer a maximum of 2 scholarships per academic year to RSM pre-master students enrolling in an MSc programme.
Scholarships offered by RSM
Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) offers multiple scholarships to prospective students from non-EEA countries who are not entitled to pay the EEA tuition fee, provided their grades are considered ‘excellent’. RSM also offers one scholarship, the Erasmus Trustfonds Scholarship, to students from EEA countries.
Other scholarships
Besides scholarships awarded by RSM, there are also scholarships awarded by the Dutch government or other organisations that are available if you meet certain criteria such as nationality, age, etc We have listed some of them below but we encourage you to use resources such as Grantfinder or the Scholarship Portal to find additional scholarships.
- StuNed
- G&D Europe Scholarship
- NN Future Matters Scholarship
- Russia: The Global Education Programme
- LPDP
- OKP
Scholarship tips
- Contact the Ministry for Higher Education in your home country to see whether there are scholarship options.
- We have virtual information session covering all you need to know about scholarships and financial aid. Watch it here.
Student loan options
For students from the Netherlands or the EU/EEA, it may be possible to apply for limited funding towards payment of your tuition fees. Find out whether you meet the nationality and age requirements and read more information about the application process here.
Other expenses
Master Application Handling fee
After having filled in all of the necessary application information on the Online Application Form (OLAF) and uploaded the required documents, applicants with a degree obtained outside the Netherlands will be asked to pay a non-refundable €100 handling fee. This fee can be paid online via the Erasmus Payment System which uses either iDEAL (for those with a Dutch bank account) or PayPal (which can be linked to any bank account or credit card worldwide). It is important that applicants complete the payment process as indicated, otherwise the system cannot register the payment.
Additional programme related expenses
The additional expenses in addition to tuition and general living costs (see below) vary per programme and may include:
- Study materials such as books, readers and business cases
- Costs involved in kick-off meetings
- Costs related to travel, international excursions and compulsory exchange semesters or internships abroad
Living expenses
For a reasonable standard of living in the Netherlands, you should have an income of between €1,000-€1,600 per month depending on your lifestyle. Further information about the costs of living in the Netherlands and related subjects can be found on this website. Below is an example of monthly expenditures:
Example of monthly expenditures
| Furnished accommodation, including gas and electricity | € 500-900 |
| Medical insurance | € 50 |
| Telephone/internet | € 15-25 |
| Food | € 200 - 300 |
| Books, recreation, clothing | € 200 - 300 |
| Public Transportation | € 50 |
| Total | € average 1000 - 1625 |
| Other potential expenses: | |
| Buying or renting a bike | € 100 - 250 (for the full 3 years) |
| In private residence (not student housing) yearly municipal and water taxes | € 100 - 300 (per year) |
Study and work - part-time jobs
Please ensure, prior to your arrival at RSM, that you have or will have sufficient funding available to finance your stay at RSM. Finding a part-time job, may be an option, but can not be guaranteed. You should therefore not rely on finding other ways to supplement your income during your studies. For additional information on obtaining a part-time job, visit the website of the Nuffic.
For EEA students there are no formal restrictions in finding work in the Netherlands, but students with a lack of Dutch language skills will find it difficult to secure employment. Non-EEA students are subject to labour regulations, which makes the likelihood of obtaining a work permit very small. We therefore ask students not to rely on this possibility. We do not encourage students to combine studies with the heavy workload from a part-time job.
Admission & application
Immigration & housing
Immigration & visas
Find out everything you need to know about entry visas & residence permits for non-EU or EEA students at RSM.
Housing
Finding housing in Rotterdam can be tricky. To help you in your search for housing, we have compiled some helpful resources
