Career Focus

The course is designed for students who are interested in entrepreneurial approaches to the biggest challenges of our time, particularly those that disproportionately affect the fast-growing and populous emerging markets. Invariably, these challenges require solutions that beggar the imagination, and that require an embrace of science, with all its excitement and uncertainty. To misquote Peter Thiel, “We wanted flying cars, let’s not be satisfied with 140 characters.”

The course is appropriate for would-be entrepreneurs, as well as those interested in the financing and curation of economic activity at the exciting edges of the knowledge frontier.

Educational Objectives

The course develops a framework to understand grand challenges, and to learn from entrepreneurs’ attempts at curating financially viable novel solutions. There are four short modules.

Mapping Grand Challenges

Grand Challenges are near-intractable, global problems, that offer the tantalizing prospect that even a partial resolution will dramatically improve some facet of human existence. Success requires individual creativity to break down a problem into constituent manageable parts, coupled with imaginatively catalyzing collective action in society.

Typically, mapping the challenge requires understanding mismatches between science (technology) on the one hand, and a challenge on the other. The science might not adequately exist in some instances, while in others, it might well have eclipsed available rules to adjudicate its use. In either case, a framework based on identifying institutional voids, or inadequacies in the enabling environment, helps in specifying opportunities and in ‘naming’ problems that might bedevil otherwise well-constructed business plans.

Cases tackle:

• Commercialization of space.
• Plant-based substitutes for animal protein

Entrepreneurial Efforts to create Public Goods

The Greek philosopher-mathematician, Archimedes of Syracuse, famously said, “Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world.” In this module, we consider entrepreneurs’ creation of platforms that address a grand challenge directly, and by enabling the creative energies of others.

Cases tackle:

• State-of-the art biometrics to tackle dual problems of identity and privacy
• Vaccines for pandemics that are as yet unknown
• Genome sequencing for biodiversity conservation and re-engineering materials

Entrepreneurial Efforts to build on Public Goods

Here, we consider for-profit ventures that identify an actionable part of a particular grand challenge. The creativity is in curating or carving out that opportunity, and that in turn is a function of the state of the science base and the institutional context within which the entrepreneur is operating. Of particular interest are available financial instruments and the state of play regarding intellectual property rights.

Cases tackle:

• Drones for last-mile delivery
• Clean energy transportation and reimagining the electric grid
• Fundamental biosciences for disease eradication

Evolution of ventures

All creative efforts take on a life of their own. Here we will look at some ways in which ventures have evolved, usually spawning a vibrant ecosystem that collectively meaningfully addresses a grand challenge.

Cases tackle:

• Multiple efforts to tackle climate change
• Tertiary healthcare for five of the world’s seven billion people

Course Content and Organization

The half-course consists of 14 sessions. Grading is based on class participation (50%) and a final project, done singly or in teams (50%). The project can either map the opportunities embedded in a grand challenge, or offer the contours of a business plan towards addressing part of a grand challenge.

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