BUU33804 Social and Environmental Innovation

(5 ECTS)

Lecturer: Dr Danielle Byrne                     

E-mail: byrned78@tcd.ie

Office Hours: TBA

Available to Exchange students

Module Description

Social innovation has been described as the process of developing and deploying effective solutions to challenging and often systemic societal and environmental issues.  In this module we will examine patterns of social innovation against a backdrop of the great climate and biodiversity crises of our times, with cases drawn from climate justice, the circular economy, nature based enterprise and food systems. The module will critically assess the evidence in support of social innovation and examine theory and practice – local and international - in social innovation, social purpose scaling, social value creation and impact measurement.  We will consider the organisational settings that social innovators adopt, including social and solidarity enterprises.  In this course, participants will work with theory, case studies and their own projects to identify how social innovation can respond to and even drive social-economic-political change in the current context. 

Learning and Teaching Approach

The approach to teaching and learning will be evidenced based, interactive and learner centred.  Firstly, lecture content and concepts will be based on theories and research from peer reviewed journals. Social innovation is an applied social science, involving organisations and individuals who claim to make real social change.  These claims will be explored and analysed using real world case studies.  And students will be encouraged to question and explore the evidence base for any claim or theory.   Secondly, interactive and learner centred approaches engage students in the learning process in a holistic way. Interactive facilitation techniques encourage students to draw on their existing knowledge and participate in new knowledge creation in groups.

Relation to Degree

Year three of a Trinity undergraduate business degree focuses on practice: learning by doing. In this module, students will have the opportunity to apply theories and tools they have learned in the first two years of their business degree to the context of social enterprises. There will also be new theories and tools specific to social innovation and social purpose organisations. Much of this learning will be through studying examples of different social innovations and innovators.

By applying commercial tools to social innovation, students will learn the limits of these tools, and where tensions arise between social, environmental and economic/financial goals. While there are examples of win-win and triple bottom line situations, there are also times when there are trade-offs.

There will be plenty of opportunities in this module to integrate and synthesise ideas, theories and techniques learned outside the formal taught courses, such as previous learning, professional and volunteer experiences, and personal knowledge.

Learning Outcomes

Having successfully completed this module, the student should be able to:

• Identify the distinctive characteristics and attributes of social innovation, innovating and innovators;
• Critically evaluate relevant theory associated with social innovation in Irish and international contexts;
• Analyse initiatives to create social and environmental impact and bring about social and environmental change, and provide critical evaluation and constructive feedback of those initiatives;
• Apply the tools and theories of social innovating and social entrepreneurship to new contexts, including new social and environmental issues and challenges.
• Communicate innovative social business ideas through pitching and writing business plans, working both individually and with a team.

Workload

College recommends that a 5 ECTS course will have a workload of 100-125 hours.  The following is a suggested breakdown for 100 hours, keeping in mind that students work at different speeds.

Required Resources

Initial reading comprises:

Anheier, Helmut, Gorgi Krlev, and Georg Mildenberger. Social innovation: Comparative perspectives. Taylor & Francis, 2019. Chapters 1, 2 and 3.

Kahn, Kenneth B. "Understanding innovation." Business Horizons 61.3 (2018): 453-460

Nicholls, Alex, Julie Simon, and Madeleine Gabriel. New frontiers in social innovation research (2015), Introduction and chapters 1, 2 and 5.

These texts are available online in the library.  Further readings will be specified and/or supplied through Blackboard.

Course Communication

Please note that all course related email communication must be sent from your official TCD email address. Emails sent from other addresses will not be attended to. 

Assessment

Assessment will be undertaken on an individual (exam or assignment) (60%) and team basis (40%).

Biographical Note

Dr Danielle Byrne is a research and teaching fellow in Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin and a member of the Trinity Centre for Social Innovation. She completed her PhD at Trinity Business School in 2022 “Social Entrepreneurship in the Irish state-funded Third Sector” and has had teaching roles relating to social entrepreneurship in undergraduate and MBA modules.  She is currently a board member of the Irish Social Enterprise Network.

She has a bachelors degree in Classics from Trinity College Dublin and a MBA from the Open University. She has worked in the private and nonprofit sectors in Ireland, the USA and the UK, holding senior roles as a manager and funder of nonprofits and social enterprises which spanned the social and environmental realms.  She has a particular interest in social enterprise taxonomies and business models, social economy public policy, and social economy solutions to environmental problems.