Social Entrepreneurship (Simonyi Social Entrepreneurship Program)

General data

Description and aims

Entrepreneurial activity does not have to be motivated by profit generation, but by triggering social change in the world. Social entrepreneurs look for opportunities, problems if you will, that affect society but the solution does not carry significant monetary (profit) potential on the other hand does generate significant social change. Students throughout the course will learn about such social and environmental challenges that must be answered by someone in the form of a financially sustainable solution (product or service). Students teams will have the freedom of selecting a social problem to be solved with the application of the business model generation framework studied and applied in the Introduction to Entrepreneurship course. Beside the BMG method teams will implement the lean startup method in order to build concept that are validated and as a result carry the real life implementation potential.

Course Intended Learning Outcomes (CILOs) 

Upon successful completion of this module, the student will be able to:

1. Understand UN SDGs and their impact on the globan and local environment. (PILO1)
2. Apply the method of oppotunity seeking and recognition. (PILO2)
3. Apply the method of business model, viability study and value proposition generation method. (PILO2)
4. Analize opportunities that emerge from different socio-economic challenges. (PILO4)
5. Evaluate feedback from future users given to the MVP produced by students (PILO3)
6. Create product and service concepts that can serve as a base for venture capital inclusion into their startup business, To learn to create meaningful and high quality deliverables (PILO5)
7. Pull together resources in order to suceed in the product and or service building process (PILO5)

(The remarks in brackets express each CILO’s connection to the Program Intended Learning Outcomes (PILOs).)

Content, schedule

The discussion of topics is divided into the following ten chapters:

1. Introduction of the course, introduction to resilience and hydrogen technology
2. Team formation, Discussion on the UN SDGs and examples
3. Defining the scope of the sub-project, aligning the sub-projects to fit the objectives of the global project
4. Field research, observation
5. Preparing viability study
6. Final presentationsLearning and teaching strategy, methodology

This module applies Experiential lerning method, which implies that students are required to activly engage in the so called learning by doing activity. After understanding the concept of startups and the business model generation along with the lean methodology students have to start building their own business concept while experiencing the theoretical underlying in operation. Students have to engage with the stakeholders of the real life business environment to test their product, servide and business concepts. Being able to gether information during these validation events and to be able to process, analize the gathered information will be crutial to succeed. Students at the end of the course will have the opportunity to pitch their business idea to real life venture capitalist. If their concept is viable investors might provide further funding to take the business tot he next phase.

Assessment

Formative assessment elements: Oral feedback on in-class activities, and on the weekly project progress.

Summative assessment elements:

* Req.: Completion of the element is required to pass the course, irrespective of the performance in other elements.

Learning materials

• Constant Beugre, (2016). Social entrepreneurship, Managing and creation of social value, Routledge.
• https://sdgs.un.org/goals
• Samuel O. Idowu, René Schmidpeter, Liangrong Zu (2020). The Future of the UN Sustainable Development Goals: Business Perspectives for Global Development in 2030.
• Julia Walker, Alma Pekmezovic, Gordon Walker (2019). Sustainable Development Goals: Harnessing Business to Achieve the SDGs through Finance, Technology and Law Reform.
• Nikolaos Apostolopoulos, Haya Al-Dajani, Diane Holt, Paul Jones and Robert Newbery (2018). ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS.
•  Ian C MacMillan (2013). The Social Entrepreneur's Playbook: Pressure Test, Plan, Launch and Scale Your Social Enterprise.Further information

Further informations