Sustainable Entrepreneurship for Bachelor students

• Can you give a short description of the content of your course “Sustainable Entrepreneurship”?

The course was designed for Bachelor students who want to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary for harnessing technology to address environmental and social challenges through entrepreneurship. The course offered a holistic overview of the grand challenges of our time and then adopted a process perspective to teach students all skills needed throughout the sustainable entrepreneurship process, from initial problem recognition and opportunity evaluation, all the way to establishing an impactful sustainable venture and presenting it professionally and convincingly to different audiences.

• How did this first semester teaching that class go?

The class was fully booked and we were very happy about the heterogenous group of students from multiple nationalities and study backgrounds that signed up. Despite the fact that student teams were never able to meet in person which made collaborations more difficult, the students surprised us with their continual participation in all activities, their creative ideas and, most importantly, their continuous improvements each week. The projects addressed many different social and ecological problems with innovative solutions such as alternatives to conventional paper based on sugar cane, smart recycling bins for cities, and software for reducing the environmental footprint in organizations. Although we certainly missed the direct interaction with the teams and students certainly get more out of experiences such as pitching, the class still worked well in an online setting.

• Could you tell what the students’ expectations were when they registered to your class?

Most students in this class had limited or no experience in and knowledge on sustainability and entrepreneurship, and therefore hoped to get an introduction to both topics. Moreover, students wanted to understand how they could use the technologies they work on or will work on in the future to tackle societal challenges. The teaching evaluations showed that most students felt that their expectations were met and felt motivated to participate due to the interactive format of the class. One major learning we made is that teaching both the basics of sustainability and the entire entrepreneurship process is too ambitious in a 2-credit Bachelor course as it leaves little room to deep dive into certain topics that particularly interest the students. We therefore adapted the syllabus for next semester and now put more emphasis on sustainability challenges and the earlier stages of the sustainable entrepreneurship process such as reframing of problems into opportunities and the evaluation of market opportunities. If students are interested to pursue their work on the projects and learn more about later stages such as funding and marketing, they are welcome to join the other entrepreneurship course our chair is offering in the fall semester (MGT-201 Introduction to Entrepreneurship).

• What style of teaching do you do?

The students teamed up in groups of 3-5 to work on their own sustainable venture ideas which had to be pitched twice over the semester. Given the health situation, we used a mix of online lectures and flipped classroom methods, meaning that students received pre-recorded videos and materials together with a task for the upcoming week which we then discussed all together or in small groups during the lecture slots. Learning results were also tested with quizzes on Moodle.

• How does your class prepare students for the working life?

We highly encourage our students to continue the work on their ideas and connect them with the relevant actors at EPFL that can support them to move their projects to the next level, for example, as part of the Tech4Impact Changemaker program or the Blaze accelerator. However, the idea behind our course is not that all students should necessarily build sustainable enterprises after their studies. Our course equips students with the general understanding of interrelated societal challenges which they need to become leaders in the 21^st century. We aim to teach them to have an entrepreneurial mindset, meaning that they learn to see opportunities instead of only problems and know how to act upon them. These skills will be useful for them, no matter if they choose to work in industry, start their own businesses or pursue an academic career.

Christina Hertel,

Lecturer & Post-doc

Chair of Entrepreneurship and Technology Commercialization (ENTC)