Sustainability and Social Entrepreneurship

Whether it is ample access to sustainable energy, equitable stewardship of Earth's ecosystems to counter climate change, food security or poverty eradication, entrepreneurship is taking a leading role in the search for sustainable solutions to the most pressing, wicked problems of society. At the intersection of business, government and nonprofits, social and sustainable entrepreneurs are increasingly visible and having an impact on local and global scales.
Building on the most recent advancements in entrepreneurship and innovation for sustainability, the course will provide students with the opportunity to learn how to apply business knowledge and skills to address complex social and environmental problems.
Students will first address the complexity of sustainability, as well as how related challenges are altering the social and competitive arena for companies and organizations, creating new threats and market opportunities. The focus will then move on knowledge and tools to sustain social and sustainable opportunity identification and exploitation. Social and sustainable business planning will be addressed along the stages of entrepreneurial discovery, with a focus on hybrid business models and supportive ecosystems. Moreover, recent advancements in the field of innovation for social change will be reviewed, with a focus on bottom of the pyramid strategies, scaling opportunities, and cross-sector social partnerships.

Participants in this course will lean what role management students can play at the initiation of social and sustainable change. They will know how to set the boundaries of social and sustainable entrepreneurship and understand the steps through which a typical process for social change unfolds. In so doing, participants will learn a vocabulary for thinking and communication about social and sustainable values. Additionally, students will apply knowledge and understanding to the identification, exploitation and scalability of social and sustainable opportunities.