Primary goal: You understand the virtues and characteristics of Social & Environmental Entrepreneurship.

Secondary goals: [1] You develop an awareness and understanding of the subtle but sometimes substantial differences between social and traditional ventures. [2] You develop a better understanding of the specific challenges and opportunities of doing ‘business’ in the social sphere.

Social & Environmental Entrepreneurship aims to combine social goals with financial sustainability. Social ventures such as Annie Connect or Onze Saar showcase that profit can be made while serving a social cause. Other social ventures such as the Aravind Eye Hospitals do not seek to generate profit. They want to maximize the social value that they create. Social & Environmental Entrepreneurship further incorporates environmental ventures, such as Solar Century, Lemnis and E-Max, which showcase that profit can be made while serving an environmental cause. Other environmental ventures do deem the serving of an environmental cause as more important than generating (shareholders) profits.
This course explores the special features of Social & Environmental Entrepreneurship (creating social or environmental value) in comparison to regular entrepreneurship (creating economic value). Attention is given to the variety in issues addressed by social entrepreneurs, how traditional business concepts such as strategy, performance and finance are translated in a Social & Environmental Entrepreneurship setting as well as limitations of and problems encountered in social and environmental venturing.

- Brooks, A. 2009. Social & Environmental Entrepreneurship: A modern approach to social venture creation. Pearson Prentice Hall, London (this is suggested not required literature).
- Schaper, M. 2005. Making ecopreneurs: developing environmental entrepreneurship. Burlington, VT: Ashgate (this is suggested not required literature).
- e-Reader with papers
- Set of teaching cases (sold by MC4E for approx. €30)

The courses of the Entrepreneurship minor (see also http://maastrichtentrepreneurship.nl/minor.html) draw on the scholarly entrepreneurship literature. They do NOT expect that you have already developed an understanding of the functional domains of business administration or small business management (e.g. strategy, marketing, accounting, HRM, finance, operations). We encourage you to take the two introductory courses of the minor (Birthing new ventures and Mobilising resources [EBC2145; EBC2146]) BEFORE taking the other courses of the Minor. As this minor is delivered in English, your command of the English language in speech and writing should be good enough to actively prepare for, participate in, and contribute to the classes.