INNO2001 Innovation for Social Impact: Doing Good While Doing Well

2020

4.5

On Campus
1 x 3-hour workshop weekly

Distance On-line
1 x 3-hour on-line workshop weekly

1 of INNO2100, INNO9004, LLAW2300 has been successfully completed

None

Core topic

It appears that a business oriented around a mission or purpose can create competitive advantage, as it encourages customers to want to purchase from them, employees to want to work for them and partners to want to collaborate with them. Two cultures are at play in the field of social innovation: an age-old culture of charity, and a more contemporary culture of entrepreneurial problem solving. Students explore how social entrepreneurs apply an entrepreneurial mindset of innovation, risk taking and large scale transformation to social problem solving with the potential to build social business models that generate rapid and sustained social impact. Project driven, students will extend on their economic analysis of social innovation in practice, by applying practical (social media) interactive tools for story-telling, spreading the word and community building to the development and user-testing of their own social innovation.

This topic aims to:

Develop a better understanding of the role of the social enterprise and social innovation in creating business opportunities that deliver social impact within a sustainable society. How can a social venture better solve, `customer jobs to be done`, creating sustainable commercial and social value in the market (product-market fit)? Students will learn how to create and test value propositions and apply early stage product/market development skills, tools and techniques facilitated by a blend of lectures, discussions, cases, readings, video material, workshops and expert guest speakers.

Students will be encouraged to exercise intellectual independence to be critical and reflective learners.

On successful completion of this topic students should be able to:

• Describe and illustrate the key concepts underlying social entrepreneurship and innovation as a phenomenon.
• •Identify how social enterprises are change makers and explain the role of social innovation in creating sustainable business opportunities
• Recognise a variety of tools specific to the design, management and evaluation of social ventures, understanding the crucial role of stakeholder management and governance.
• Understand various social business models for impact.
• Understand economics and funding of social enterprises, as well as how social ventures measure success
• Design strategies to connect tribes, create communities and spread the word, in order to design, test, evaluate and pitch a social venture.
• Apply social media and story-telling tools, to create a social media presence of the social venture in order to gather feedback and test the value proposition.