Home / The University / Faculties / Faculty of Economics and Business Administration / News / 40 students successfully completed the 3th edition of the Social Entrepreneurship course at FEBA

   

24.06.2019

 

 

In March 2019 the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration at Sofia University gave the start to the 3th edition of the Social Entrepreneurship course. The course was organized in collaboration with the Rinker centre and United ideas for Bulgaria. The course was attended by more than 80 participants, 40 of whom successfully completed the course as part of their semester disciplines. The average grade was 5.75. We thank you for the hard work and the motivation and we believe that you will become successful social entrepreneurs.

 

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The students had the opportunity to acquire practical knowledge and skills related to the setting up the financing and management of a social enterprise. Discussing cases from Bulgaria and the world, the students learned the basic steps, the challenges and the aims in the design, start up and scaling stages of successful entrepreneurial initiatives with social elements.

 

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Guest-lecturers were our friends from “Listen up”, “ClaimCompass”, “Together in class”, “Taratantsi”, Miroslava Staneva from “Nedelya” sweetshop, Kiril Petrunov from “LevIns”. In addition, the students analyzed the business models of a range of international social enterprises among which Ruby Cup, Danimal and Care Kenya.

 

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What our students said:

 

“I`d like to thank once again for this course which for me personally was the most useful one. It changed my viewpoint on certain things and most importantly, it restored my hopes for university.”, a student from the Economics and Finance program, FEBA.

 

“Thank you again for the effort you made and the inspiration that you gave us! You are awesome!”, a student from the Business Administration (in English) program, FEBA.

 

“I`d never have thought that it was possible to teach so much useful practical knowledge in the course of 30 hours. You proved that is possible!”, a social entrepreneur.

 

The course content included analyses of different business structures, methods of resource management, team structuring and good practices for achieving the stability of an enterprise. The students looked at strategies, risks and challenges faced at the start and in the management of a social enterprise.

 

One of the main advantages of the course was its practical rather than theoretical orientation and this encouraged the students to attend the lectures and to engage actively in the discussions.

 

The course approached topics such as introduction to social entrepreneurship, generation and validation of ideas, the Canvas business model, capital resources and financial planning. Students were particularly active in the discussions of marketing strategies, the risks faced by social business as well as sales techniques and ways of attracting customers.

 

How to single out the ideas that have greater potential? How to determine our target group and to receive reliable feedback about our product or service? Which are the working techniques for testing and validation? These and many more topics were discussed by lecturers and course participants during the lecture on Generation and Validation of ideas.

 

What is Value Proposition Canvas? In order to explain this business model lecturers used as an example the advantages and drawbacks of Tesla automobiles. The aim was to outline the main points in the development of a business plan: what you should know about the product; what you should know about the customers; what is going to happen in six months, in a year. But in business nothing happens the way we expected. Facing the reality, the entrepreneur has to accept their mistakes and to think about new creative ideas.

 

Regarding the structure of a good team of a startup social business, the lecturers advised the future entrepreneurs to ensure variety in the small team – in other words not to hire people with the same interests as theirs. This will guarantee that they will always get different points of view and the important questions will be looked at through different lens.

 

Some other questions that were discussed were: how to successfully present goods and services to customers; how to keep the audience’s attention until the last slide; how long should our presentation opening be and what should our key messages be. The students understood and remembered all advice and they demonstrated this in the projects they presented at the end of the course.

 

From the point of view of marketing we looked at the marketing funnel, the targeting of advertisement campaigns as well as the use of a variety of marketing instruments for different business aims.

 

Talking about sales strategies and attracting customers we answered the questions about when sales become successful, how are long term relation with customers developed and what are the stages through which we have to go to gain the customers trust and become their consultants for years ahead.

 

During the lecture on social entrepreneurship and the challenges to growth we explained what the main channels for social enterprises growth are, what are the pluses and minuses of franchising and also what the conditions are that make possible the buying/ financing of a social enterprise by a bigger trading company.

 

“A risk can have both a positive and a negative effect – it depends on a number of factors as well as on your response to this risk” said Didi during the lecture on the risks of social business. What are the kinds of risk usually faced by operative, organizational, financial and political markets? We looked in detail at each market and gave examples.

 

We talked about the value that each business could pursue and what line it should follow to achieve maximum potential: value for the client, value for the business, value for the planet and society.

 

More information on our next projects you can find both on the OIB website (www.oib.bg) and on our facebook page „Обединени идеи за България“ (United Ideas for Bulgaria).