Course Catalog
Social Entrepreneurship
90-845
Units: 6
Description
The social-impact Lean Innovation Lab (“Social Entrepreneurship”) is a continuation of the course Entrepreneurship: A New Venture, designed to challenge students to tackle longstanding and emerging problems across the Learn-Earn-Career landscape (i.e. the Future of Work, Learning, Connection, and Opportunity). Students will have the option to select from a set of carefully curated, complex and real-world problem set(s) and/or introduce their own problem sets within the thematic focus. Students will be presented with the option of working as an embedded “frontend innovator” within an established organization (driving new-product and corporate innovation) or developing a solution to their problem statement as an independent new startup venture.
Students will learn to apply lean innovation frameworks and tools to develop a foresight positioning and data-driven thesis and will use applied anthropology, ethnography, and quantitative analysis to develop conviction for an idea through the business invention process. A central component to the Innovation Lab is learning to synthesize and apply concepts and techniques from the Innovation Studio Process framework and across three distinctive phases:
Phase I: Venture Design
Rapid, systematic approach to research, define, envision and assess the best path forward for a new venture, product, service or experience.
Research, Direction, Foundation and Investment.
Phase 2: Venture Build
Increased speed to market through focused sprints, and data collection and analysis, with a tailored team that matches the challenge.
Team Setup, Design Sprints, Development Sprints, Data Analysis/Development
Phase 3: Venture Growth
A lean, iterative method to market validation through tracking and testing.
Launch, Scale, Measure
Learning Outcomes
Knowledge, experiences, and skills students are expected to gain throughout the course include:
The Innovator’s Mindset
An exploration of the deeply personal rationale and reasoning for exploring a problem statement/set, gaining hands-on experience evaluating categories, relevant problems and in close collaboration with peers, instructors and problem sponsors. Learn to optimize your personal resources towards the commitments that best fulfill your potential and demonstrated passion, while learning to understand the various lenses through which an entrepreneur identifies opportunity.
Discovery and Business Validation
Learn to recognize and develop strategic foresight - brand and business positioning statements - by applying customer discovery, problem assessment, and opportunity mapping. Apply critical discovery skills to validate the market to competitively position your venture. Learn to apply design thinking to hypothesize a differentiated solution that solves customer pain-points and stands apart within the business category (industry).
MVP and Business Model
Apply lean startup Build-Measure-Learn methodology to develop a minimal viable service, experience, product (MVP). Develop and/or validate the value proposition and conduct business model canvassing to understand the impact on company construct. Outline the key milestones (development/design sprints) that will navigate the new venture to an MVP (high-level business, product, brand roadmap). Pivot or preserve the new venture. Lean to select and demonstrate hypotheses, discovery, information gathering and hypothesis testing.
Financial Viability
Financial viability and developing an economic outlook. Learn to recognize the need for financial acuity to inform pricing, revenue streams, organizational construct, business go-to-market, and the protection of “key activities”, including intellectual property. Learn to read, understand and apply the fundamentals of startup finance, including unit economics, proforma P&L, projections, and capital versus operational budgeting. Explore how to roadmap capital needs to the new venture MVP. Lean application of extracting insights from relationships and systems to properly vet design and curate development.
Product Development, GTM, and Effective Pitching
Develop a step-by-step plan, in alignment with your Roadmap, that outlines how you intend to take your product, service, or experience venture to market. Learn the critical components to go-to-market, including customer acquisition, brand placement, and partnership and investor development. Learn the various methods by which a new venture may growth and/or be capitalized. Learn how to develop and shape an effective pitch to a tailored audience.
Prerequisites Description
There are no hard prerequisite requirements for this course with exception for the student-entrepreneur completing the “20-10-10” analysis prior to the start of course and/or submitting their personal statement that aligns their course of study with a detailed definition (qualification) of the problem they aspire to solve through entrepreneurship.
Optional, and encouraged, prerequisite include lean innovation frameworks (completion of Entrepreneurship: A New Venture and/or Lean Innovation Lab: 94891) financial analysis, management science I, project management, product management.