GE2247 - Social Innovation and Entrepreneurial Venture Exploration

This course aims to introduce concepts and techniques in developing innovative ideas and creating social business opportunities for social enterprises. To this end, this course anchors on interdisciplinary knowledge, namely management, economics and socio cultural fields; through these lens students can develop a balanced and sustainable perspective to solve social problems. More specifically, the course draws on the prevailing theories and techniques in the domain of social entrepreneurship in driving the innovation development process in different cultural contexts. Innovation has been well-supported as a main source of economic growth in both developed and developing economies, yet it is a high-risk endeavour. Apparently, failures in innovation attempts are costly and wasting social and economic resources. As the acronym of the course title SIEVE suggests, the course apart from inspiring students to generate innovative ideas to solve social problems, it also intends to enable students to sieve the gems out from the soil - through refining and translating their innovation ideas into business and economic viable ventures. This course does not require students to have any prerequisite courses. While it complements other GE social entrepreneurship courses, e.g., GE1218 Make a Difference: The Challenge of Social Entrepreneurship in a Globalised World; however, the course developers were mindful to avoid overlapping the concept of social entrepreneurship. The course design especially on the entrepreneurial venture development aspect is intended to distinguish it from other related GE courses.