Critical Social Inquiry 0211 - Practicing Social and Environmental Entrepreneurship

Many of the escalating planetary crises of the current moment are calling for innovation - not only new technologies, but also new ways of working, organizing, meeting basic human needs, and supporting change efforts and movements. Entrepreneurship here is understood as a practice of employing design thinking to develop, test, and offer innovations that provide value to one or more constituencies. It therefore offers applications across many types of organizations (business, nonprofit, educational, political, and more). In this workshop based class, we will engage with entrepreneurship as a methodology for addressing the complex needs of the current moment, through both critical study and applied practice. This course is ideal for any students who may explore careers in startup business, social enterprise, or nonprofit or other organizational leadership. Keywords: entrepreneurship, business, leadership, innovation, enterprise

Environments and Change Students should generally expect to spend 8 hours a week on work outside of class time.