Unit of Study BUSN2008 Applied Social Entrepreneurship (2024)

Unit description

Provides students with an opportunity to learn all about how to build a social enterprise. The traditional lines between private, public and non-profit sectors are being blurred by the emergence of social enterprise and shared value. That is, social entrepreneurs are finding ways to build impact models that either break even financially, or even make profit. They have done so by engaging innovative business models to solve social and environmental problems on local and global levels. With social enterprise emerging, this unit gives students the opportunities to learn about it by practical application. Students study these themes working in teams where they apply a creative process to build a real social enterprise. At the end of the unit, students will have developed a working knowledge of the ideas of problem space identification, design thinking, lean startup and the business model canvas. This subject is primarily practical: students will be required to “get out of the building” and actually speak to a range of real people, and conduct real experiments to design a social enterprise that actually addresses a social issue in Australia.

Unit content

Module 1 - Entrepreneurs and the Social Enterprise 

Module 2 - Social Enterprise Ideation

Module 3 - Social Enterprise Business Models

Module 4 - The Reality Check: Testing the Business Model

Module 5 - Impact: Making a Difference

Module 6 - The Way Forward