90-869, Applied Research into Private Sector Social Enterprise

12 units

Prerequisites: None

Delivery Format: On-Campus

Information:

Prerequisites: None; graduate students and third or fourth year undergraduates from any department at Carnegie Mellon are encouraged to enroll, as are mid-career professionals
Delivery format: On-campus
Instructor: Jerr Boschee, Founder and Executive Director, The Institute for Social Entrepreneurs (www.socialent.org)

Description:

An opportunity for students to help shape and develop an important multi-year research project that will go live online January 1, 2009; the project began during the fall of 2007 but is still in its formative stages. The Carnegie Mellon Social Enterprise Project will be the first comprehensive, longitudinal study of private sector social enterprises, defined as businesses that directly confront social needs through the products and services they deliver rather than indirectly through socially responsible business practices such as corporate philanthropy, equitable wages and environmentally friendly operations – or through the unrelated business activities mounted by nonprofits. Included will be social enterprises that begin life as for-profit entities and remain that way; those that begin as nonprofits and morph at some point into for-profits; and those that begin as nonprofits and remain that way but operate in every other respect as profit-making businesses. There will be no exams.

Last modified on March 27, 2008