This course combines four days of the FMS January training.

The growth of the social enterprise space depends on the quality of the entrepreneurs and the activity of the investors. This module will outline the landscape of enterprises in emerging markets, as well as the active impact investors in the space. Frontier Market Scout Fellows will learn how investors conduct due diligence, making investments, and investee support, as well as learn how to evaluate, promote, and assist enterprises in their own activity. By taking students through a brief history of the field and an engaging case study, as well as a discussion of the book The Innovation Blind Spot, which highlights commonly made mistakes in investing, the course hopes to put the Fellows in both the entrepreneurs’ and investors’ seats while giving an inside look at how an impact investor actually operates.

The second module takes you to the different venture ecosystems around the world. It helps you understand their similarities and differences, the unique challenges that entrepreneurs in different ecosystems face, and the matters of import to investors across different geographical regions. You will also learn about some of the existing models for collaborative work among investors and entrepreneurs across regions that help to bridge resource and knowledge disparities. It is a course where you learn by doing. You will step into the shoes of an entrepreneur building a venture in a region outside the well-known venture hotspots and present your idea for funding to a sophisticated entrepreneur. You will learn what factors are important in telling your story in a compelling way, and you will negotiate a deal for financing with the investor. You will consider some of the thorny questions surrounding social ventures and why some investors shy away from them. You will analyze some socially-minded ventures that have been successful in attracting funding to learn what their funding sources were, and what factors contributed the most to helping them secure funding. Finally, you will come up with a Plan B, C, or D for when Plan A doesn’t work and you are not able to raise financing, especially when your Plan A is to engage your bankrolling dad.

The final module introduces the new concept of using exchange network to model a business. It is designed to provide participants with the basic skills for designing low-resolution business models that adhere to the essential tenets of strategic management while taking deliberately a stakeholder approach, typical for a social enterprise. The learning is predominantly experiential using live cases, which allows participants to gain first-hand experience in developing a deep understanding of the difficult challenges that a social enterprise is faced with, brainstorming ideas to overcome the challenges, generating innovative business models based on some or all of these ideas, and obtaining real-time feedback on alternative business models from each other and in-class experts. Participants will learn the fundamental elements of a stakeholder-based business model, its representation using exchange network, and the design thinking approach to generating innovative social enterprise business models. They will also understand the strategic logics underlying a superior business model based on the time-tested principles of strategic management. More importantly, the participants will learn practical tools and skills for designing a new business model through a real-world, real-time business challenge.