Assessing Entrepreneurial Responses to COVID-19

“On Monday 26 October, in partnership with the Zicklin Center and I4A Club at Wharton, at the culmination of the Global Social Impact capstone course, students presented their final projects to a group of over 25 leading development experts, practitioners, and academics from around the world.

In response to the challenges presented by COVID-19, the Global Social Impact course for Wharton seniors was fully redesigned. Through a combination of virtual lectures, selected readings, class polls, guest speakers, and breakout room discussions, the course integrated and strengthened students’ academic skills and helped them apply these new-found skills in cross-functional ways to the production of real-world consulting reports and project proposals related to Entrepreneurial Response to COVID-19. The course took the students through the questions entrepreneurs should address as they go from an idea to implementable solutions with purpose and lasting impact. This was reinforced by the “Hero Journey”, a joint research with our colleagues from Olson/Zaltman that provides in depth insights on the fears and challenges that entrepreneurs are faced with on their innovation journey. The course also required students to grapple with the current ethical and legal challenges that business organizations and entrepreneurs face, such as defining the purpose of a business, determining how to incorporate global goals and standards like the SDGs and ESG into a business model, and designing mechanisms to promote ethical behavior, transparency and accountability, and combat such systemic challenges as corruption.

Students concurrently provided feedback to the founders of the winning SDGs&Her businesses (SDGs&Her is a joint World Bank, Zicklin Center, UNDP, and UN Women) and drafted their own projects on Entrepreneurial Response to COVID-19. Leading development experts from the World Bank Group, UNDP, and GIZ; corporate executives; leading academics; I4A partners and alumni (I4A is a joint World Bank and Zicklin Center initiative with nearly 20,000 alumni); Wharton alumni; entrepreneurs; and civil society representatives provided specific suggestions on how to further improve the project proposals. Dr Mohieldin, co-founder of the I4A and SDGs&Her initiatives, was the guest lecturer.

Congratulations to the students and many thanks to our friends and colleagues who provided valuable feedback to the project proposals.

We will keep you posted on the next steps.”

-Djordjija