Applied Social Entrepreneurship Course is a master’s level course that provides university students the opportunity to be social entrepreneurs for one semester, where they are challenged to identify and propose solution to SDG-related problems.
Applied Social Entrepreneurship (ASE) is an elective master’s level course that provides university students the opportunity to be social entrepreneurs for one semester.
The teaching methodologies adopted are intended to stimulate the students’ ability to go from theory to practice, through the apprehension of concepts, tools and methodologies which are explained during the lectures. These contribute to the process of individual and group learning and the development of critical analysis and integrated thinking, necessary to tackled wicked problems.
The course design aims to give students an in-depth experience of the complex and nonlinear process of social entrepreneurship. In groups, students are expected to: 1) identify a social problem that they are familiar with, or would like to see solved, 2) study in depth the problem tree to define its causes and effects and 3) based on this diagnosis, design and test an innovative solution using the tools provided in the course lectures. The solutions must have an underlying impact model that defines the main inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes and expected impact of the proposed solution.
In this course, students go through a complex journey of deconstructing a social or environmental problem in order to discover, recognize and understand its underlying causes and effects, in a complex scheme that reveals the systemic and interconnected dimension of societal challenges. Students are incentivized to reach out to other actors in the community that are being affected by this problem, or organizations that are already trying to tackle it, as to have a better vision on how the problem could be tackled and their solution can actually add value . This multi-actor environment reinforces the idea that societal problems should be solved in partnership with different stakeholders.
The work group project culminates in a final pitch day, where students present their proposed solution to a group of investors. After the course, students can choose to carry out their projects outside the School or even integrated in our community of entrepreneurs – a program that provides guidance and support to student developing entrepreneurial projects.