Professors
On the completion of this course students will develop skills in:
- Understanding the social entrepreneurial concept and process.
- Analysing social problems and identifying levers to solve them.
- Designing impact and business models that are aligned and scalable.
- Applying flexible approaches to business and impact model design.
- Developing an awareness on ways of funding social business models.
- Understand various tools to design, evaluate and scale the impact of social ventures.
- Introduction to the course. Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship.
- Solving relevant problems: introduction to design thinking and data analysis. Case study: breaking isolation in Barcelona.
- The idea: designing scalable solutions. The case of John: systemic change as a goal.
- Designing possible business models and alignment with impact model. The birth of Kiva: sorting out bottlenecks to scale impact and the organisation.
- Evaluating impact: why, how and when. Practising impact measurement.
- Analysis of social entrepreneurs: presentations.
- Hybrid Value Chains: the case of Housing for all.
- The case of Discovering Hands: taking a service to scale.
A. Reading assignments: read text assignments prior to class and be prepared to discuss the text material, work on the cases and answering instructor questions orally with well-organized thoughts and ideas.
B. Class attendance: you are expected to attend each class period, be on time and stay the full class period or be counted absent. You are responsible for all course material missed due to absence.
C. Case studies: we will work around some case studies, reproducing the complexity of real-world projects, and invite you to debate and co-design the best solutions to them. Case studies will invite you to reflect and consolidate learning based on action-oriented challenges combined with essential knowledge and lessons learnt.
D. The main project we will work on throughout the course is making some initial steps in designing a social impact venture, from analysing an issue, to generating ideas, developing its impact and business models, collecting information from potential stakeholders, evaluating impact, and planning scale. Each team of 3-5 students will work on a project and make a final presentation on the last day of the course to real impact investors.
E. Some classes will include instruction from the professor on specific tools that should help students approach the case studies in a structured manner and with rigor. These tools must be used in the design of the main project. All tools will be illustrated through case study and real-world examples.
Your final grade consists of:
1. Class Attendance and Participation (10%)
2. Case studies (25%)
3. Analysis of a social entrepreneur (10%)
4. Final Deliverable (45%)
5. Peer evaluation (10%)
- Martin, Roger L. and Osberg, Sally R. (2015) Getting Beyond Better, Harvard Business Review Press. ISBN: 978-1-63369-064-4.
- Osterwalder, A and Pigneur, Y (2010) Business Model Generation, John Wiley & Sons. ISBN: 978-0470- 87641-1.
- Osterwalder, A; Pigneur, Y; Bernarda, G; Smith, A (2014) Value Proposition Design, John Wiley & Sons. ISBN: 978-1-118-96805-5.
- Bornstein, David and Davis, Susan (2010) Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know, Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-019-539634-8