Insegnamento a.a. 2017-2018

This course is intended to familiarize students with the challenges and opportunities of social entrepreneurship, providing knowledge and tools to sustain social opportunity identification and exploitation. It addresses social planning along the stages of entrepreneurial discovery, social impact assessments, innovative investment and financial models, such as venture philanthropy and social venture capital. Moreover, recent advancements in the field of innovation for social change are reviewed, with a focus on bottom of the pyramid strategies, scaling opportunities, and cross-sector social partnerships.
At the end of course, students are able to

• Set the boundaries of social entrepreneurship and understand the steps through which a typical entrepreneurial process for social change unfolds.
• Learn a vocabulary for thinking and communicating about social values.
• Build up theories of change and acknowledge the main managerial approaches to turn social entrepreneurial opportunities into business models.
• Understand and measure social impact through the development of impact value chains.
• Analyze funding needs and sources for social entrepreneurial ventures.
• Evaluate scaling strategies for social value maximization.

Theory and practice are combined dynamically, making room for class discussion, individual and group work especially relying on case studies, practitioners' lectures and class presentations. Students have the opportunity to participate in a business game. Finally, an in-company training initiative is organized to experience social businesses from within.

For attending students
The course is based on active teaching methodologies aimed at maximize students' participation.
The final grade consists of the following components

• End-of-term written exam (40% of the final grade): it tests the knowledge obtained by attending the classes and studying the required readings. It consists of short specific questions (both open-ended and multiple choices).
• Group assignment (50% of the final grade): it consists of the development of a business plan for a social start-up dealing with a specific social problem. Details are provided in class.
• In-class assignments (10% of the final grade): they are developed in groups and based on cases and short exercises.

Instructions and further details are provided in the syllabus of the course.

For non-attending students
Written exam to test knowledge obtained studying mandatory readings and additional readings as listed in the syllabus. As for attending students, the exam consists of short specific questions (both open-ended and multiple choices).