BUU44623 Designing Social Innovation and Delivering Social Impact

(10 ECTS)

Lecturer:

Prof Gemma Donnelly-Cox

Email: gdnnllyc@tcd.ie

Office Hours: 4-5pm Thursdays in office after workshop

Available to Exchange students 

Module Description

Social innovation is the creation and implementation of a novel concept, idea or organization, that benefits society and is achieved through community, business, institutional and/or behavioural change. If you are interested in thinking differently and making a difference, whether your focus is climate action, or gender equality, you are interested in social innovation. Whether you want to change the world, or help make your neighbourhood a better place to live, your desire to make a difference needs to be matched with the knowledge and skills to develop workable solutions, to deploy them effectively and to assess their impact. This module will guide you in understanding how processes of social innovation work and how to develop yourself to play a role within them. You will learn how processes of social innovation are used to address key societal challenges. This module introduces concepts for and approaches to social innovation and value creation, linking social innovation theory, business practices learned throughout the business degree and new strategies for defining, delivering and measuring social impact. You will learn about global and regional approaches to social innovation, how to develop a theory of change and use logic models, and how to intervene in a process of social innovation. You will learn how to engage with key individuals within the fields of social innovation and social change in Ireland and abroad, including academics,  practitioners and activists.

Learning and Teaching Approach

The core learning activity in the module is gaining the knowledge needed to assess the development of social innovation and applying it to the practice of delivering social impact.

Throughout both semesters, classroom work is team-based, with participants working in lecturer-selected teams comprising full time TCD students and visiting students. Each team will have a mix of disciplines, programmes, and geographies. 

The first semester is focused on knowledge and skills acquisition, with workshops combining a lecture section and a team-based assignment.  Teams will work on a ‘Communicating Impact’ project for a socially innovative Irish social enterprise or nonprofit organization.  First semester workshop participation is supported by pre-class preparation – reading, video clips featuring core concepts and ideas - and workshop time is used for teambuilding, case discussion, and debating strategies that might apply to featured social innovations.  Teams will produce a written report on their assigned project organization, and a graphical representation of how social value is created in its social innovation process. The first semester examination tests knowledge and critical understanding of theory and concepts introduced during the semester.

The first session of the second semester is a public poster exhibition, presenting the value creation infographics developed by the teams.  Teams in the second semester will propose, assemble, promote, curate, and write up reports on the social innovation speaker panels their and other teams have organised  The final, case examination tests capacity application of knowledge gained in the module and in other undergraduate modules.

Module Level Learning Outcomes

• LO1 Demonstrate the ability to describe and apply the key theories / frameworks / debates in the field of social innovation and social impact.
• LO2 Evaluate a social innovation in an Irish / international context with respect to the potential for sustainable impact and systemic change.
• LO3 Demonstrate the ability to communicate effectively to specialist and non-specialist audiences, in both oral and written presentations.
• LO4 Demonstrate the capacity to understand, assess and address social and environmental challenges locally and globally.
• LO5 Demonstrate the capacity to use teambuilding assignments to develop the capacity to work effectively in multinational, multidisciplinary teams.

Relation to Degree 

 While some of the theoretical content of this course will be new to business studies students, the module is integrative of the study of organizations and management that participants have developed over the previous three years and during their Senior Sophister year.  As such, it builds on participants’ functional knowledge of human resource management, accounting, finance, marketing and operations as well as strategy, organization theory and behaviour.  Social Entrepreneurship, and Business in Society are very relevant to this module. 

The team assignment, workshop discussion and term exam will provide students with opportunities to apply their functional knowledge to the domain of social innovations and enterprises and engage in social innovation process.

Workload

Textbooks and Required Resources

The required readings are drawn from relevant academic and ‘grey’ literature which will be provided to students via the Blackboard site. The readings for each lecture topic are provided in the module schedule below. They may be updated throughout the semester, a few weeks ahead of the session which they will be used.

The first chapters from a book of readings on social innovation are used in the first weeks of the module. It is available as a pdf under a creative commons license, which means you can download it free of charge.

It is Nicholls, Alex; Julie Simon and Madeleine Gabriel (2015). New Frontiers in Social Innovation Research. Palgrave MacMillan.  You can download this collection at this address: https://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=1002117

Assessment:

Assessment will be based on a series of assignments: 

1. Semester One - Team 'Communicating Social Impact' Project [25%]
2. Semester 1 - Two Hour Exam in Christmas Exam Period [25%]
3. Semester 2 - Team Social Innovation Ecosystem Project [25%]
4. Semester 2 - Two Hour Exam in Summer Exam Period [25%]