After completing the course, students should be able to:
- Identify and discuss social innovation initiatives that are taking place across sectors (such as the corporate, nonprofit, government or startup sector), and their origins.
- Analyze tensions between the pursuit of social and pragmatic (e.g., financial) objectives in social innovation initiatives and apply theoretical knowledge to propose appropriate ways to respond to such tensions.
- Critically assess a social challenge of their choice, and generate and justify a compelling proposal for how social innovation initiative/s could be developed to address that challenge.
- Reflect critically on the opportunities, barriers and limitations of implementing social innovation initiatives.
Social innovation, namely the creation of social value through innovative activities, is a topic of growing interest across organizational areas. It is being practiced increasingly by social enterprises and non-profit organizations, by small and large companies, by the public sector, and by informally organized citizen groups. Areas can include the inclusion of vulnerable or marginalized groups in society and in the workforce, the alleviation of poverty, and the creation of collective benefits for communities at large. Social innovation is nevertheless a challenging objective, as multiple tensions need to be assessed and balanced or prioritized, and legitimacy established across diverse audiences and stakeholders, in order to achieve impact. These are the issues that will be covered and practiced during this course.
Learning methods for this course can include self-directed study, teamwork and peer work, case studies, class discussions led by the teacher and by student teams, and guest speaker sessions. Exact methods employed might vary from year to year.
Myrto Chliova
The required readings comprise of articles, book chapters and other resources that will be available electronically via the library or instructor.
There is a requirement of a total of 80% attendance in contact sessions to pass the course.
No prerequisites.
Team assignments and Individual assignments
Also, a peer evaluation will be used to adjust individuals' grades on the team assignments, and can result in a potential adjustment of up to -1 point out of 5 of total course grade.
There is a requirement of a total of 80% attendance in contact sessions to pass the course.
The teaching time and the location of the course can be found at Sisu information system
From the blue bar, click Lecture and open the Groups and teaching times tab to see the teaching time and the location of the course. Exam times can be seen by clicking Exam.
The teacher has four (4) weeks to grade the exam submissions starting from the exam date.
MyCourses online learning environment is a tool for both students and teachers for communication and managing everyday course work. You need an Aalto User ID to log in to the course's MyCourses workspace and participate in teaching.
Digital workspace of the course:
MyCourses
More details on completing the course will be available at MyCourses closer to the start of the course.
Registration for Open University courses is done via the link below:
Course registration
Registration for this course starts on 8.12.2025 at 9.00
Registration for this course ends on 29.12.2025 at 23.59
It is not possible to register before the registration period has started or after it has ended.
The number of participants is limited to 5.
This course is organized by the Aalto University School of Business.
The course fee is paid upon registration for each course at a time and it is binding. Familiarize yourself with registration and payment rules as well as other guidelines for students:
Registration, payments and rules
You can activate your Aalto User ID the day after the registration and you should activate it no later than the day before the start of the course.
Instructions for activating your Aalto user ID
Once you have activated your Aalto user ID, also enable multifactor authentication. Some of Aalto University's services require multifactor authentication.
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