Grand Challenges for Entrepreneurs

Grand Challenges for Entrepreneurs (GCE) is designed for students who are interested in entrepreneurial approaches to the biggest challenges of our time.  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.

The challenges affect the entire world, though inevitably the burden often falls disproportionately on the fast-growing and populous emerging markets.  Invariably, grand 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.