This course is all about you and your ideas, purposeful doings, sustainability and teamwork.
In Entrepreneurship with Purpose, students learn about the characteristics of entrepreneurial ventures that are driven by a dual mission: a strong social, societal and/or ecological purpose alongside economic goals. They learn about, discuss, and reflect upon social and economic purpose during ideation, team building and business modelling. They get acquainted with ideas, tools, processes and methods from various “practices” in business and organisations, like Theory U, New Work and Design.
You students are invited to reflect upon and critically explore if and how social/ecological and economic purpose can be potentially aligned in entrepreneurial ventures. Individually and in teamwork, you reflect upon how personal values can drive the various blocks of a venture creation process. You experiment in teams to deal with potentially conflicting values and interests to jointly find out how to align them in a collectively created idea.
In the course, the concept of regeneration, the process Theory U and contemplation and expression through arts are used to explore how an entrepreneurial mindset can foster action towards sustainable activities.
The idea of regeneration is to nurture and restore natural ecosystem. In the course, we ask how you can apply entrepreneurship to integrate nature, its value and its limited capacities into you team’s venture and, generally, into business activities.
Theory U is a process and method developed and applied by the Presencing Institute (Otto Scharmer, Katrin Kaeufer & team). Its methods and tools are used in the course to explore individual values and mindsets. It frames the teamwork. It is used as an approach for reflection, co-creation and as one potential perspective on necessary societal transformations.
In contemplations on arts and as form of expression, you deal with arts both in theory and in practice. You wilil look at art for inspiration and to engage with its critical power. You will make art to express, reflect and, yet again, look. Through arts, we engage with different aspects of entrepreneurship, like the consideration of stakeholders, prototyping, and the integration of nature in business activities.
