This module consists of the following four distinct but closely related blocks of study:
Block 1: Societal impacts of entrepreneurship and innovation
In this block, you'll be introduced to the societal impacts of enterprise and innovation, as well as the tools and techniques needed to identify, analyse, and manage them throughout the module. It recaps selected topics on entrepreneurship and innovation to ensure progression to the next level for innovation and enterprise pathway students and to introduce novices to key themes and concepts on ethics and sustainability as applied in entrepreneurship and innovation. It also articulates the underlying principle of the module, which is about using entrepreneurship and innovation to solve societal problems in an ethical and sustainable manner, considering this at different stages of an enterprise life cycle. Written and interactive cases and examples are used to bring the theoretical concepts to life.
In Week 2, the OpenStudio will be introduced as a platform for you to document (diary) your reflective learning linked to your career development planning. Additionally, as part of the introduction to Block 1, you'll complete a self-diagnostic questionnaire to assess your knowledge and skills gap to help identify a professional development plan (PDP) linked to your future career aspirations. Specific activities and tasks have been designed to help you review your PDP across the module.
Block 2: Experiencing sustainable entrepreneurship and innovation
In this block, you'll examine how entrepreneurship and innovation can be used to solve societal challenges (e.g. social inclusion, environmental protection, economic and community development) through an experiential learning experience – My Experiential Learning Project. It starts by introducing the significance of specialist sectors in society and the three specialist areas selected for study. To ensure coverage of a range of relevant societal problems while meeting the learning needs, three ideal specialist areas have been selected for in-depth study:
As the sub-titles suggest, you'll be clustered into three specialist areas. However, the block introduction will make clear that the three categories are not mutually exclusive. My Experiential Learning Project will require you to conduct independent research within your chosen specialist area, using evidence to analyse how existing enterprises seek to use entrepreneurship and innovation to address societal problems. You should be able to conduct interviews in this organisation, so it would be helpful if you could ensure access to the organisation.
You'll work on this experiential project throughout Block 2 with specific module-directed study activities provided to support them, such as a framework for identifying and researching a societal problem in a specialist area, method of data collection and analysis, intrapreneurship and societal change, and report writing. Within this context, you'll select a societal problem within your specialist area (which could be one of the three above) and start working towards developing a solution.
Block 3: Sustainable Enterprise Challenge
This block provides the opportunity to practise how to create and manage an enterprise as part of a team through a computer-assisted Sustainable Enterprise Challenge (SEC), using a version of either ‘Serious Games’ or ‘SimVenture’. You'll be provided with a scenario based on an enterprise that has just been launched, and that is expected to provide an innovative and sustainable solution to a defined societal problem. Student teams will then be created and tasked with completing a series of weekly challenges: setting strategic objectives (e.g. triple bottom-line), defining organisational values and recruitment strategies, sourcing financial and non-financial resources, making choices about production technology and marketing, making enterprise expansion decisions (including a second round of funding). All of these are geared towards generating student-led, pre-defined impacts. The outcome includes weekly templates of team analysis and decisions and end-of-project impact measures.
Block 4: Critical reflection and integration
In this final block, you'll integrate your previous learning to produce your end-of-module assessment. You'll return to the societal challenge identified in Block 2 and the learning from Block 3 (inter-relationship among function areas of entrepreneurship and innovation) to develop a solution to the problem. This includes decisions as to whether the solution is best offered through a start-up enterprise or an existing enterprise (intrapreneurship), ethical and sustainability considerations and a clear success criterion for measuring the impact of the proposed solution.
By studying this module, you will:
By studying this module, you will gain the ability to:
You’ll get help and support from an assigned tutor throughout your module.
They’ll help by:
Online tutorials run throughout the module. While they’re not compulsory, we strongly encourage you to participate. Where possible, we’ll make recordings available.
Course work includes:
A non-examinable assessment will reflect the time and effort devoted to the ‘My Experiential Learning Project’ and the ‘Sustainable Enterprise Challenge’ components, and the opportunity these provide to reflect on your aspirations and career planning. A number of activities are built into the module, particularly in Block 4, which will assist you in bringing all these together for the end-of-module assessment.
You’ll have access to a module website, which includes:
You can study this module on its own or use the credits you gain towards an Open University qualification.
B327 is an option module in our:
Creating futures: sustainable enterprise and innovation starts once a year – in October.
This page describes the module that will start in October 2026.
We expect it to start for the last time in October 2027.
As a student of The Open University, you should be aware of the content of the academic regulations, which are available on our Student Policies and Regulations website.
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