Fall 2018
Mondays and Wednesdays 3:00-4:15 pm
Sever Hall Rm 113 (Harvard Yard)
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This course will provide a framework (and multiple lenses) through which to think about the
salient economic and social problems of the five billion people of the developing world, and
to work in a team setting toward identifying entrepreneurial solutions to such problems.
Case study discussions will cover challenges and solutions in fields as diverse as health,
education, technology, urban planning, and arts and the humanities. The modules
themselves will be team-taught by faculty from engineering, the arts, urban design,
healthcare and business. The course will embrace a bias toward action by enabling
students to understand the potential of individual agency in addressing these problems. All
students will participate in the development of a business plan or grant proposal to tackle
their chosen problem in a specific developing country/region, emphasizing the importance
of contextualizing the entrepreneurial intervention.
COURSE OBJECTIVES:
• To provide a framework through which to think about the salient
economic and social problems of the developing world.
• To view a complex problem through a variety of disciplinary lenses, to
appreciate that each lens reveals different facets of the problem, and to
recognize that they collectively cause one to consider and re-consider
candidate solutions.
• To recognize that candidate solutions do not usually admit of a “quickfix”,
rarely yield to a technological panacea, and are usually contextdependent.
• To work in teams on a candidate entrepreneurial solution, and to
demonstrate an appreciation of the trade-offs involved in embracing that
solution.
View the course poster here.