• 052900 - BUSINESS IN TRANSFORMATION: SOCIAL AND SUSTAINABILITY CHALLENGES LAB [1]

• Cotutela con mondo esterno

This Lab is a training arena that aims at developing students’ understanding about the profound changes that companies are currently facing due to the so-called 'societal challenges'. As part of the Lab, students have the opportunity to work on real projects that aim at answering to this evolution of the context, applying in practice the concepts, ideas and methodologies that are thought in the stream’s core courses.

The Lab fits into the overall program curriculum pursuing some of the defined general learning goals. In particular, the course contributes to the development of the following capabilities:

• Understand context, functions, processes in a business and industrial environment and the impact of those factors on business performance and social ecosystem 
• Develop new, innovative ideas and solutions in business, social business and industrial scenarios evolving over time
• Interact in a professional, responsible, effective and constructive way in a working environment, also motivating group members

Lectures and exercise sessions will allow students to:

• Understand how rising ‘societal challenges’ are changing the way how companies operate and create value
• Understand how companies are answering to these new trends through to the development of innovative business models, the creation of new forms of partnership, the exploitation of new product and process technologies
• Develop new and innovative social and sustainable business models
• Develop a new tools to support the impact organizations
• Identify and define the methods and approaches to measure the social impact

The project laboratory will allow students to:

• Write a design specification document
• Write a structured project work
• Develop a real project in a real company that is addressing the social trends, by defining and applying a comprehensive plan, following the implementation to selected solutions and evaluating short and long term impacts
• Work and Interact in a multi-objective and multi-stakeholder context, with direct interaction with companies and other entities, that are pursuing the trade-offs between economic, social and environmental

This Lab is articulated into a workshop of an intensive week time, from 16th September to 20th September, and weekly sessions (September - December) 

The topics addressed in the first workshop are:

• The grand transformation: How societal challenges and mega-trends are transforming the business world and modifying the way in which companies compete
• Vertical analysis for selected challenges: Each of the selected challenges (Energy & Resource Management, Food & Nutrition, Education & Skills gap, Wellbeing in a Changing Society) will be deployed from different points of view in order to address: sociology of change, interpretive models, technological opportunities, breakthrough solutions implemented in the international setting through policy strategy and new social entrepreneurship.
• Development of Social & Sustainable Business Model: During the exercise sessions, Social & Sustainable Business Models will be developed as a potential answers to the different societal challenges.

Weekly sessions are devoted to exercise, tutorials and assistance for supporting the development of projects with the partner companies. These sessions entail meetings and confrontations with organizations, companies, associations, internal and external stakeholders involved in the project. The projects focus on cases of key enabling technologies and social entrepreneurship

Students are required to know the principles and methods of business modelling, the basic notions of performance measurement and management

An oral exam at the end of the course and the projects developed with the enterprises in the laboratory part of the course.

Education

Food

Food

Ageing