Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Development

Course goals

Learning objectives
This course is designed to provide academic knowledge related to idea development, value proposition, market introduction and management of new sustainable business and to put these into practice. The learning objectives of this course are:

1. To recognize the (economic) sources of social and environmental problems and identify opportunities to alleviate or eliminate those underlying conditions
2. To explain what (sustainable) entrepreneurship is, who (sustainable) entrepreneurs are, and what drives (sustainable) entrepreneurship.
3. To understand and put in practice foundational steps towards creating a new sustainable business (including business modelling/planning, marketing strategies, and resource acquisition).
4. evaluate the risks and rewards of undertaking sustainable entrepreneurship, which also involves finding ways to measure the financial as well as social and environmental risks and rewards of a new venture.
5. To convey business ideas to stakeholders, both in writing and in a pitch presentation.

This necessitates that students understand the concepts of sustainability and sustainable entrepreneurship, and that students learn about the economic, environmental and social problems facing local and global communities and recognise the opportunities that arise from this. Finally, students should be able to evaluate the risks and rewards of undertaking sustainable entrepreneurship, which involves finding ways to measure the economic as well as social and environmental risks and rewards of a new venture.

Content

Entrepreneurship focuses on identifying new opportunities for creating value for customers or users and commercially developing those opportunities to establish a profitable business.
Sustainable entrepreneurship combines the traditional focus of entrepreneurship with an emphasis on opportunities to alleviate social or environmental conditions. Sustainable entrepreneurship is about entrepreneurs striving simultaneously for profit and for improving local and global environmental and social conditions.
 
This course is addressed to students interested in exploring the challenges of sustainable entrepreneurship. The course will provide academic and practical insights into the entrepreneurial process and in particular:

• The opportunities and challenges of developing a new venture, given characteristics of the market and the institutional context;
• The challenges of aligning financial profits with social and environmental value;

The overall objective of this course is to make the students aware of the opportunities offered by an entrepreneurial career, the skills needed for and academic knowledge about entrepreneurial processes, in the context of sustainability. The course emphasizes the business & management perspectives to entrepreneurship.

Format
This course is an interactive and participatory course that teaches students the key concepts from theory to practice. It adopts a mix of lectures, tutorial sessions, case studies, workshops and activities related to the business model assignment. Students are expected to attend and participate in the introductory lecture, all guest lectures and take part in all tutorial sessions. The students will be allocated into groups (4-5 students) for the business model assignment.
 
Assessment method

Written midterm exam with open-ended questions (50%, individual assessment)
Evaluation of business model assignment (50%, group assessment).

Business Model Assignment (group work):
Groups will develop a business model from scratch that addresses a social or sustainability challenge that they choose themselves. The final proposal for a sustainable venture based on this business model will be achieved in several steps throughout the course. The evaluation will be based on the quality of the final work, the pitch presentation and the process towards the final document(s).
 
Written Exam (individual work):
There will be a midterm exam that consists of open-ended and case-based questions. The questions are based on the key course concepts that are taught and discussed during the course.

Students of the master’s programme Sustainable Business and Innovation can contact Simona Negro (S.O.Negro@uu.nl) for enrollment in this course.

In case online access is required for this course and you are unable (or do not want) to buy the access code, you are advised to contact the course coordinator for an alternative solution. Please note that access codes are not re-usable meaning that codes from second hand books do not work, as well as access codes from books with a different ISBN. Separate or spare codes are usually not available.