Enabling Entrepreneurs to Shape a Better World

Learn how you could set up an enterprise that also helps to solve some of the world's biggest social problems. In this free online course, meet some of the world's famous social entrepreneurs and learn how you could join them!

This course was retired in October 2023.

Self-paced since August 5, 2016
Language: English

Course information

Retired

This course was retired in October 2023.

We already have the technology and knowledge to solve many of the world’s biggest problems, but that alone is not enough. Tackling society’s big issues also requires new ways of thinking and above all an entrepreneurial approach.

“Enabling Entrepreneurs to Shape a Better World” is all about developing a new mindset and learning to use field-tested tools and techniques for designing viable, impactful solutions for a better world - solutions that are – crucially – also based on self-sustaining business models.

This free, interactive course offers the chance to learn from some of the world’s top entrepreneurs and catalysts for social change. Featured speakers include Muhammad Yunus, Hedda Pahlson-Moller, Alexander Osterwalder, Cliff Prior, and Bill Liao. (You can read their biographies opposite).

The course is illustrated by a series of problem-based case studies on migration in China, Mexico, and Germany/Europe. These cases demonstrate how social action and business leadership can exert positive impact on some of the unique challenges posed by mass migration.

If you would like to dive deeper into the practice of impact-driven entrepreneurship, you will also have the option of joining an intensive special coaching track, where you will develop your ideas and work closely with an international team. On this optional special track, you will have the opportunity to participate in a competition, with a prize being awarded to the concept or project that shows the most potential for sustainable impact.

And if you’re a student, you can obtain a certificate with credit points.

Sounds exciting? Enroll now!

Course Characteristics

  • Starting from: May 30, 2016, 09:00 UTC. (What does this mean?)
  • Duration: 6 weeks with video lectures, (2-4 hours learning per week)
    plus, optionally, 3 weeks to participate in the coaching track competition
  • Assessment: Weekly assignments, optional coaching track competition. There is no final exam.
  • Course end: July 14. If you participate in the coaching track competition, then August 5.
  • Course language: English
  • How is an openSAP course structured?

Course Content

Week 1: Entrepreneurship to Foster Societal Change
Week 2: Deep Dive into Problem Solving and Ideation
Week 3: Innovative Thinking, Approaches and Business Modelling
Week 4: Preparation and Testing
Week 5: Storytelling and Motivating
Week 6: Scaling Sustainably
Weeks 7-9: Coaching track competition (submission and evaluation of case-study-based business models)

Target Audience

  • People from all disciplines with an interest in entrepreneurship and social impact
  • Experienced entrepreneurs wishing to extend their skills to societal change
  • Anyone interested in applying entrepreneurial skills to the current challenges of migration and refugees

Course Requirements

  • There are no formal requirements for this course.
  • The course is free-of-charge.

This course is brought to you by:

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Course contents

  • Course content no longer available

  • Week 1:

    Entrepreneurship to Foster Societal Change
  • Week 2:

    Deep Dive into Problem Solving and Ideation
  • Week 3:

    Innovative Thinking, Approaches and Business Modelling
  • Week 4:

    Preparation & Testing
  • Week 5:

    Storytelling and Motivating
  • Week 6:

    Scaling Sustainably
  • I Like, I Wish:

    We Love Your Feedback … And Want More
  • Team Challenge (Special Track)

Enroll me for this course

The course is free. Just register for an account on openSAP and take the course!
Enroll me now

Learners

Current
Today
14,305
Course End
Aug 05, 2016
11,664
Course Start
May 30, 2016
8,304

Rating

This course was rated with 4.46 stars in average from 713 votes.

Certificate Requirements

  • Gain a Record of Achievement by earning at least 50% of the maximum number of points from all graded assignments.
  • Gain a Confirmation of Participation by completing at least 50% of the course material.

Find out more in the certificate guidelines.

This course is offered by

Denis  Bartelt

Denis Bartelt is the co-founder and CEO of Startnext – the largest crowdfunding platform in the German-speaking area. In 2003, he founded the Internet software agency tyclipso.net, located in Dresden. Together with Tino Kreßner, Denis then founded the crowdfunding platform www.startnext.com at the end of 2010. Two years later, the founders initiated Startnext Network GmbH, a network of different types of crowdfunding platforms. Denis is a trained advertising photographer. 

Cliff  Prior

Cliff Prior cbe is CEO of Big Society Capital, the UK wholesale social investor and market champion. Previously, he led UnLtd, which has supported 13,000 people in starting up, build an ecosystem for social entrepreneurs and founding the Global Social Entrepreneurship Network.

Cliff is a director of UCLPartners, leading on mission alignment for the G8 Social Impact Investment Taskforce, and has been an advisor to Government, a founder of Clore Social Leadership, and many other agencies and social ventures.

Zoran Puljic

Zoran Puljic is the director of Mozaik Social Enterprise in Bosnia and a fellow of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. A pioneer of post-war reconciliation in the late 1990s, Zoran emerged from the last decade with an innovative approach to community development.

He is currently piloting Mozaik's new 10-year strategy to reinvent Bosnia through social entrepreneurship.

David Romero

David Romero is a senior research scientist & scientific project manager at the Center for Innovation in Design and Technology, Tecnológico de Monterrey University, Mexico. His current focus is on advanced/circular manufacturing and service engineering.

David has held various executive director positions in R&D, entrepreneurship, and innovation and technology management, as well as in business incubation & acceleration, family business, and IP & technology transfer. He is a member of the IEEE Tech & Engineering Mgmt. Society, has published over 70 refereed articles, and serves on a number of editorial and scientific committee boards in the disciplines of business and industrial engineering.

Klaus Sailer

Klaus Sailer is a professor at the Munich University of Applied Sciences and CEO of the Strascheg Center for Entrepreneurship (SCE). He is a co-founder and board member of the Social Entrepreneurship Akademie. Klaus worked at Infineon AG and in 2000, co-founded the communication company adward AG, becoming its chairman. He successfully realized further innovative ideas with various start-ups. His main research topics are in innovation process, business modelling, co-creation, and societal innovations.

Sam Yen

Former Chief Design Officer, SAP

Sam had multiple roles at SAP: Chief Design Officer, Global Head of Design and User Experience, and prior to that he led the SAP AppHaus, an innovation team tasked with building new solutions, establishing new markets, and reaching new users for SAP. Sam initially joined SAP as a senior member of the Design Services Team, a group in the Office of the CEO tasked with accelerating the adoption of Design Thinking as a process for innovation and development of internal and external SAP products.

Jakob Assmann

Jakob Assmann is the co-founder and CEO of Polarstern. Since 2011, Polarstern has been supplying homes and companies not only with 100% green electricity but also with 100% green gas from organic waste. For each customer in Germany, Polarstern supports a family in a developing country to get green energy as well.

Jakob has a diploma in business administration, a master of business research, and a PhD in business administration from LMU Munich (Germany), as well as an MBA from Colorado State University (USA). To clear his head he goes mountaineering.

Aaron  Hurst

Aaron Hurst is a widely recognized social entrepreneur and authority on social innovation and public/private partnerships. He is the CEO of Imperative and the author of The Purpose Economy. Aaron previously founded the Taproot Foundation, a nonprofit organization building a national pro bono marketplace and leading the global service movement. Aaron is well known for his thought leadership and is a regular blogger for the Huffington Post, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and LinkedIn.

Ding Li

Since May, 2008, Ms. Ding Li is the vice president of Non-Profit Incubator (NPI) – one of the leading supporting organizations for NGOs and Social Enterprises in China. Over the past 7 years, she has led R&D for strategic initiatives for NPI. She also established strategic partnerships between NPI and several famous international organizations (UnLtd, CIVA, AVPN, and GSEN).

From 2009 to 2012, she was a trainer in the Social Entrepreneurship Skills training program organized by the British Council.

Ryan  Little

Ryan Little is a project manager and leads the social finance practice at the BMW Foundation, where he works to adapt best international practices in Germany. He is a regular speaker and writer on topics ranging from early-stage investment to green economic policy. He is a serial entrepreneur, having co-founded StormFisher Biogas, a renewable energy company, CanadaHelps, a donations platform, and Avenir, an e-commerce company. Ryan holds an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business.

Alexander Osterwalder

Alexander Osterwalder is an entrepreneur, speaker, and business model innovator. He is co-founder of Strategyzer, a leading SaaS company that helps organizations develop new growth engines, better value propositions, and powerful business models via online applications and facilitated online courses. Alex is the lead author of the best-selling book “Business Model Generation” and invented the Business Model Canvas, a strategic tool to visualize, challenge, and (re-)invent business models and value propositions.

Pat  Pillai

Patmanathan Pillai is a teacher, businessman, and social entrepreneur. He has previously held executive directorships in the media industry, as well as being a news anchor, having broadcast for 22 years in various roles. Pat has dedicated his life to growing and serving LifeCo UnLtd and its mission. LifeCo UnLtd develops champion mentality and also finds, funds, and supports social entrepreneurs. It is a social enterprise; 100% owned and governed by a trust, the group has reached 80,000 beneficiaries to date.

Nick  Allardice

An Australian native now based in New York, Nick Allardice is the vice president of Global Campaigns for Change.org. He leads teams of campaigning and communications experts in 18 countries to support Change.org's 130+ million users to win campaigns on issues they care about. Nick is also the co-founder of the Live Below the Line campaign, which has raised more than $20 million to fight poverty. Previously, Nick has also held senior roles at MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY and the Oaktree Foundation.

Florian Huber

Florian is passionate about shaping a desirable future together with students from around the world. He leads the academic program for entrepreneurship at the Strascheg Center for Entrepreneurship in Munich. His approach is human-centered, and focuses on creating viable business models for products and services which target “real” needs. He is a techie and a foodie.

Stephanie  Raible

Stephanie Raible is a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow, focusing on entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, and leadership education. Stephanie worked with the Global Entrepreneurship Summer School MOOC as a curriculum architect. Over the past year, she has also held positions with the Social Entrepreneurship Akademie, BMW Foundation, Proboneo, and Deusto International TUNING Academy.  Stephanie previously taught social entrepreneurship in the Global Studies faculty at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia and worked in university teaching and consulting.

Muhammad Yunus

Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus is the father of both social business and microcredit, and the founder of Grameen Bank. Grameen methods are applied in projects in 58 countries, including the United States, Canada, France, The Netherlands, and Norway. He also founded more than 50 other companies in Bangladesh. For his constant innovation and enterprise, FORTUNE Magazine named Professor Yunus in March 2012 as “one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time.”

Dominik  Böhler

Dominik Böhler leads the Tech Talents program at UnternehmerTUM. The program enables students to solve societal challenges using their technical skills.

Dominik is a lecturer at TUM and holds a PhD in information systems. His trainings focus on project-based learning in entrepreneurship, technology, and design. His recent book “On the Nature of Distributed Organizing” explains how digitalization, technology, and entrepreneurship change the way organizations work.

Andy  Goldstein

Andy is a serial entrepreneur who founded his first computer software company in 1983. He is also co-founder and executive director of LMU EC and holds a teaching position at LMU Munich. In addition to this, Andy is the managing director of Deloitte Digital and the German Entrepreneurship GmbH, he leads the German Accelerator, and is co-founder and a board member of the Social Entrepreneurship Akademie.

Hedda Pahlson-Moller

Hedda Pahlson-Moller is an early-stage investor focused on social impact. Her work centers on social entrepreneurship and mobilizing resources towards positive social impact. She founded EBAN Impact and is a board member of EVPA, LMDF microfinance and Rising Tide, a women’s angel program.

Hedda teaches entrepreneurship at Sacred Heart University as well as social enterprise & innovation (SESI) and VP at the University of Luxembourg. She is an executive fellow at Essex University.

Hedda runs Tiime, a catalyst for social impact.

Barbara Scheck

Barbara Scheck is assistant professor for social investment at the University of Hamburg, and has held this post since 2012. Her research focuses on the financing of social enterprises, impact and mission-related investing, and impact assessment.

She has a Diplôme de Grande École and MSc from the European School of Management, studying international business administration in Paris, Oxford, and Berlin, and has a PhD from Technical University of Munich.

Bill Liao

Bill Liao is an Australian entrepreneur, venture capital investor, diplomat, author, and speaker with a distinguished record in the areas of business, development, and community activism. Bill is co-founder of the CoderDojo movement, founder of Weforest, and is the investment partner for Europe of SOSV, a $250m international investment fund, and the founder of their Bio-Tech practice.