Creating Social Value

The economist Muhammad Yunus - Nobel Peace Prize winner and one of the central thinkers behind the idea of social entrepreneurship - regularly complains that schools and universities have clung too strongly and for too long to a traditional, one-dimensional view of human beings, and have therefore focused their educational efforts on enabling a working life as an employee. I think human beings are born with entrepreneurship in their DNA," Yunus is convinced - and the latest "Creating Social Value" seminar at WHU is also based on this assumption. Interdisciplinary, transfer-oriented, and supported by guest lecturers from theory (e.g. Dr. Johannes Lenhard, who researches on "Ethics of Venture Capital" at the University of Cambridge) and practice, the students in the 4th semester are enabled to transfer their abstract knowledge into their own startup or "intrapreneurship" ideas - and finally have to convince not only the lecturers but also their fellow students in a role play of their business model as well as their "impact" in terms of the UN SDGs. To do this, they use real evaluation models from the world of startup investors, and are subsequently supported by WHU in possible spin-offs.

In its traditional form, social entrepreneurship is mostly dealing with developing countries and health, education or income related issues of the poor and socially neglected groups of people. As such, social entrepreneurship projects have often been followed and partly managed or organized by international non-profit organizations. However, current trends (including ESG and impact investments) and developments point towards an increased interest of entrepreneurs in starting social ventures that contribute to social development and the society while also generating profit, e.g. in the framework of the SDGs. As such, social entrepreneurs face the challenge to balance social topics and ideas with business models targeted towards generating revenue and surplus. In this course, we look at new forms of social entrepreneurship and focus on entrepreneurial opportunities that deal with current social issues and challenges. While social entrepreneurship has emerged from projects in countries in e.g. Africa or India, this course also looks at social topics in Europe, Germany and other developed countries. Jointly, we identify important social topics that, for instance, deal with unemployment, financial illiteracy, immigration, the homeless, sick or care for the elderly. We discuss the question: What is the future of the social enterprise? And, can profit orientation help to solve social issues or does it rather harm the original intentions of social projects?

Thus, this course provides a useful framework for students that

1) want to focus on social entrepreneurship / social intrapreneurship and learn more about the functioning of socially responsible ventures / ESG / impact investment and social business models and/or

2) want to complement skills they have gained in other entrepreneurship courses that deal with idea generation, business modeling or business planning.

Main components of the course are:

" Identification of social topics, networks, organizations

" Learning from social entrepreneurship cases

" Identifying and developing a unique social opportunity

" Understanding and describing social value

" Learning to evaluate social ventures and their scalability

" Understanding/addressing concepts of sharing economy

Grading:
Final presentation of group project (group work): 50 %
Reflection paper (individual): 50 %

Group Presentation