Social and Sustainable Entrepreneurship in Singapore and Southeast Asia
This course on Social and Sustainable Entrepreneurship in Singapore and Southeast Asia is designed as a 1-week compact field experience in Singapore. It takes place during the autumn break and features company visits, guest lectures, and the possibility to work on your own social or sustainable enterprise idea.
Course Overview and Objective
Led by Prof Heiko Bergmann, this course employs a dynamic blend of interactive learning methods designed to make social entrepreneurship (in the following understood in a broad sense, incl. sustainable entrepreneurship) both accessible and actionable. Through carefully curated lectures, real-world case studies, engaging activities, and field visits, you'll develop both theoretical understanding and practical insights into this type of entrepreneurship within the Asian context.
Because social entrepreneurship is a topic that has many theories and frameworks, the course is designed to guide participants through the existing models and to provide a realistic and evidence-based perspective to understanding this type of entrepreneurship in Singapore and Southeast Asia.
Course Content
While social entrepreneurship has been part of entrepreneurial ecosystems in many parts of the worlds for several years, Southeast Asia is experiencing unprecedented growth in social innovation, driven by increasing public awareness and substantial investment flows. Singapore is an especially interesting case, because businesses here strive to combine economic progress with social and environmental prowess to serve a well-educated and increasingly socially cautious society that is quickly vocal about its preferences and dislikes.
Surrounded by countries sharing similar aspirations with internationally connected youth demanding more justice and participation in the decision making concerning their futures, the topic of social entrepreneurship in Southeast Asia promises to be an exciting and rich learning ground to understand the trends and aspirations of the new generations in one of the fastest growing and increasingly more prosperous regions of the world.
Social entrepreneurship is also fundamentally grounded in action. Thus, learning by doing is a necessary component of this course. Even though there is limited time for practical experiences, participants will be introduced to concrete entrepreneurial experience through team exercises and case studies. They are encouraged to prepare for case discussions and to actively participate in class as well as team activities. Discussions in the plenum and in each team, alongside all other activities and exercises provide an opportunity for sharing each participants’ unique perspectives about social entrepreneurship and personal experiences with peers and members of the local entrepreneurship ecosystem.
Course structure
This course will take place over one intensive week at the St.Gallen Institute of Management in Asia, located in Singapore’s historic Chinatown. Most of the days (i.e. Monday to Thursday) will feature half a day of seminar input, e.g. case studies, lectures, and workshops and half a day of applied experience, e.g. team exercises or field trips. On the final day of the course, the afternoon is reserved for student teams to present their project, share key insights, reflect on their experience, and receive constructive feedback from instructors and peers. For further information and to find out when the next course takes place, please refer to the course information sheet on the HSG website under course directory.
Application procedure
The course is offered to students from the MGM program, and open to all other master courses of the University of St.Gallen. The course will be held during the midterm autumn break in Singapore. There are a total of 25 places available, which will be assigned by a special application process (outside of the typical bidding framework). To apply, kindly submit your CV along with a brief motivation statement (maximum half a page) to Henry Müller (henrywillem.mueller@unisg.ch). For further information, please approach the instructors directly:
Heiko Bergmann (Instructor): heiko.bergmann@unisg.ch
Henry Müller (Teaching Assistant): henrywillem.mueller@unisg.ch