Regenerative Entrepreneurship in the Global South

In this course, you will work in a team to identify a start-up or challenge opportunity in regenerative and circular entrepreneurship. You will challenge the as-usual buzzword narrative entrepreneurship that only focuses on the solution-profit drive mission. Instead, you will analyze a global/regional/national/local context and look at the social, economic, environmental, political, cultural, and entrepreneurial ecosystem synergies and trade-offs from a challenge taking place in the “Global South” and co-develop an intervention concept that tackles a challenge given by our challenge owners from South-east Asia, Latin America, and Africa. You will go from testing the intervention idea´s validity to building a viable business model with local partners incorporating their local systems knowledge, ethnographic methods, and decolonial participatory design methods. This course focuses on diving deep into regenerative and circular entrepreneurship and developing regenerative/circular business models that generate positive well-being, and social and environmental impacts that prioritize the voices and needs of the local grassroots organizations.

You will focus on creating innovative interventions for some of today’s urgencies. Transforming the value chain for unique marine biodiversity hotspots, thinking along on bio-inspired solutions, and working in rural agro-forestry farming with local historically underrepresented communities are some topics you will dive deep into during the course. The course narrative is built around entrepreneurial tools and alternative systems knowledge such as regenerative leadership, storytelling, skills for a new wave of change-makers, regenerative value proposition, stakeholder analyses, and regenerative business modelling to analyse opportunities for regenerative and emancipatory entrepreneurial solutions for and with local communities.