Course summary

The MSc Social Innovation & Entrepreneurship is embedded in a department which is passionate about supporting students who are dedicated to social and environmental change. The Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship hosts the Socially Progressive Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPIE) Research Cluster. SPIE's aim is to promote knowledge exchange and share new methodologies for socially progressive research and entrepreneurship, prompting trans-disciplinary research across real-world contexts. Social innovation is concerned with ideas that address unmet social needs. Socially innovative ideas include restorative justice, hospices, kindergartens, distance learning and traffic calming (Mulgan et al., 2007), amongst others. These ideas are usually brought to fruition through an entrepreneurial process, which is concerned with turning innovations into viable and sustainable business models. Never before has social innovation and entrepreneurship been so central to society: climate change, the threat of pandemics, increase in world population and poverty are only some of the mega-trends that require novel solutions and business models to implement them. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals stem from a global urge to address such issues. In tandem with the latter, research in this area has grown significantly in recent years. This is an important area of research, practice and teaching.