DEVENG 204
Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship
Social entrepreneurship entails market-oriented approaches to address social problems for sustainable, scalable outcomes. This course will enable students to frame complex problems and devise entrepreneurial approaches for addressing them. Students study the dynamics of societal challenges and the conceptual framework of social innovation and social entrepreneurship from theoretical and practical perspectives. Students also explore technology solutions to addressing global social problems with a systems thinking approach. Students additionally learn how to develop appropriate business models and implementation strategies for a social venture.
Topics
- Explain with appropriate examples the concepts of social innovation and social entrepreneurship from theoretical as well as practical perspectives. Given a social challenge, determine alternative approaches to affecting social change. Analyze the impact of technology-based social ventures in various parts of the world and discuss the opportunities, challenges, and tensions encountered by the respective entrepreneurs. Develop business models and implementation strategies to realize social ventures that are technologically appropriate, environmentally benign, socially acceptable, and economically sustainable. Determine appropriate assessment metrics and identify (or devise) simple instruments to measure social impact and Return on Investment (ROI) on social ventures. Create, test, and refine business plans. Concisely and precisely articulate ideas to diverse stakeholders using verbal, written, and electronic methods. Communicate ideas and solutions to a variety of audiences in a variety of media.
- Students can expect to depart the semester understanding customer-driven design and social entrepreneurship methods, tools and processes. They will also learn how to work on multi-disciplinary teams to address socio-technical challenges.
Official catalogue course objectives and student learning outcomes
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026-2027