Sus­tain­able Entrepreneur­ship

Course content

Sustainable entrepreneurship describes the discovery and exploitation of opportunities to create business models which address humanity’s social and environmental challenges. Sustainable entrepreneurship generates disequilibria in market and non-market environments, by finding ways of turning environmental and societal problems into complementary assets. The course will develop capabilities in sustainable opportunity identification as well as sustainable enterprise modeling. At this point in history, particularly due to anthropogenic climate change, there is broad consensus that humans in aggregate need to use fewer resources, consume less, and set humanity on a sustainable relationship with the earth. Generally, when we ponder these sorts of changes to human existence, we think in terms of sustainability. 

Sustainable entrepreneurship will give you the opportunity to both define sustainability and design a business model for an organization or a startup to implement your idea of sustainability. 

The course Sustainable Entrepreneurship will be divided into three sections. In the first section, students will learn basic research design and design thinking as it relates to sustainability and then craft independent research projects which result in a robust and rigorous problem definition. In the middle section of the course, students will undertake group independent research on the topic of their choosing in order to develop a business model addressing the issue selected. In the final section of the course, students will analyze their research data and then design and present their sustainability solution. 

Sustainable entrepreneurship will be highly interactive and assignment based. Students will have the opportunity to try out and workshop everything they learn in the class. Most of the course's time will be spent in this sort of applied learning. Given that, attendance, diligent coursework, and participation are all essential parts of learning in Sustainable Entrepreneurship. 

The course is taught and examined in English.