Social Entrepreneurship Syllabus
“A little bit of good can turn into a whole lot of good when fueled by the commitment of a social entrepreneur.” – Jeff Skoll, Founder, Skoll World Forum
Social entrepreneurship is a booming area of entrepreneurship programs around the world. Many students today want to change the world, but they struggle with understanding how to start. Using our social entrepreneurship syllabus, you can position students to address a social need with a mission-driven for-profit or not-for-profit venture.
This sample syllabus lays out a skills-based, experiential journey during which students develop the mindset and skillset to create value as they address some of the biggest problems facing our society today.
Social Entrepreneurship Skills
A social entrepreneurship course, done well, helps students gain transferable skills they can use to change the world! These skills are particularly important as students tackle really big social problems like climate change, equality and justice, diversity and inclusion, election security, etc.
These skills revolve around two main goals: finding a problem worth solving and finding a solution worth building. To find a problem worth solving, our social entrepreneurship syllabus guides students through a series of exercises designed to:
- Develop a growth mindset so students believe they can be good at anything.
- Leverage failure by experiencing and reflecting on a series of small failures.
- Generating ideas that bring them meaning.
- Finding and interviewing the best customers for their ideas. Students learn what to ask customers and how to analyze interviews to guide their business model iteration.
To find a problem worth solving, our social entrepreneurship syllabus guides students through a series of exercises designed to:
- Enhance students’ brainstorming skills and enable them to develop solutions based on customers’ problems.
- Monetize solutions using effective pricing and financial modeling strategies.
- Prototype new versions of their product that allows them to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.
- Run business model experiments using small bets and different strategies until they find one that works.
Experiential Learning for the Social Entrepreneur
The skills necessary for success as a social entrepreneur include identifying opportunities, problem-solving, customer interviewing, and prototyping. Students completing a course using our social entrepreneurship syllabus may not build a social business or movement today or tomorrow, but the skills they learn will be valuable for them in any career path once they leave campus.
While they are on campus, students are involved with many organizations in the community and across campus. No matter their position in these organizations, you can show your students how the skills they practice using this social entrepreneurship syllabus will benefit them in all of those organizations.
Students looking to change the world want inspiration and want to know it’s possible.
Show them it is possible by letting them practice the skills necessary to bring change to life. We built our social entrepreneurship syllabus upon a foundation of these skills, guided by the expertise of our community of nearly 10,000 entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship professors.
Get the Social Entrepreneurship Sample Syllabus
We’ve created a detailed Social Entrepreneurship sample syllabus that details the components of a full semester course.
It’s free for any/all entrepreneurship teachers, so you’re welcome to share it.
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