Strategic Design for Business and Societal Impact

The elective Strategic Design for Business and Societal Impact is a course about proposing, creating, and capturing value for and with a wide range of stakeholders, whether these are companies, government, academic institutes, citizens, or animals and plants. Focusing on a real-life case from practice, it provides you with an understanding of how business models, interorganizational collaborations, and entire ecosystems revolve around the proposal, creation and capture of different types of value, and how to design for this. In this course, we connect how to make money from the perspective of a single organization with how to realize value for society in line with the values you hold. The course builds on knowledge from Understanding Organizations and Understanding Values. 

The course content consists of two main parts (see Figure 1), which you will work on with a group of 3-4 students. Part 1 covers the proposal, creation and capture of value from the perspective of a single organization, drawing on business model design knowledge and tools. Each student group focuses on a particular type of organization (i.e., business, government, knowledge, societal, or nature/environmental). Part 2 addresses the joint proposal, creation and capture of value with multiple organizations, using stakeholder, joint value creation, and ecosystem innovation theory and tools. Here, student groups discuss and negotiate together, simulating how joint value creation works in practice. The groups will be formed based on your own interests during the first introductory session of the course.

The assessment for this course consists of the following summative assessments:

1.    A digital group assignment consisting of open questions that can be answered by working on a group design. The group assignment counts for 50% of your final grade.

2.    An individual, digital exam of 2 hours with multiple choice and open questions. The individual exam counts for 50% of your final grade.

The group assignment and individual exam are both assessed with a mark rounded off to one decimal place. The final mark for the course is only calculated if a mark of at least 5.0 is obtained for all summative components. The final mark will be rounded up to a half or whole mark, in line with the faculty’s rules for rounding up marks. If the final mark is 6.0 or more, you have passed the course. If the mark is lower than this, read the information about resit opportunities.

The following formative assessments are offered:

·         During the design sessions in weeks 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.6, and 3.7:

Discussions with other students and the course coordinator about the literature and tools, your group assignment and example exam questions. This formative assessment helps you to understand the literature and tools, develop your ability to apply them, as well as analyse and evaluate value proposition, value creation and value capture designs. It also gives you an overview of what to hand in for the group assignment, what to expect at the individual exam, and provides a detailed understanding of why certain answers are better than others.

·         During the expert feedback sessions in weeks 3.5 and 3.8:

Feedback from the case representative(s), course coordinator and other students on your group assignment.