Winter and summer term courses

Study for impact

Teaching with a focus on impact – making a positive change to society or the environment – plays a crucial role at the TUM School of Management. Not only is it a key topic in many of the courses taught here; there are some classes that entirely focus on this important topic.

A pathway to have impact and reach the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) is through building your innovation and entrepreneurship skillset. Below, we want to introduce you to some of the courses on impact through innovation and entrepreneurship offered to Master’s students. You can find many of these courses on TUM online – if you have not registered for them already, consider doing so now! And note how many of these courses are not only open to students of the TUM School of Management: given impact often requires interdisciplinary thinking, you may find students from other schools and sometimes even other universities. You can find more information on all of these courses on TUMonline – do consider submitting your registration, even if some application deadlines may have passed already.

 

For a broader overview, please also see the School’s webpage on Sustainable Management Education. There you can find even longer lists of courses contributing to our ambition to make a change.

Winter term

  • How can entrepreneurs try to address environmental problems, and what kind of answers to this question can research provide already. The goal is to prepare students to write a Master’s Thesis on a topic in this domain.

     

    MGT001355S, Prof. Vedula, Garching

  • Innovation is frequently depicted as an apolitical, evolutionary process that plays out in a quasi-deterministic fashion between (apolitical) technologies and (apolitical) markets, with little room for intervention or governance. At the same time, innovation is frequently presumed to follow some universal mechanics that can be captured in the form of abstract models and apply similarly everywhere. In this course, we will repeatedly question both premises. The principal focus of the class is putting these instrumental ways of thinking about innovation into broader socio-political perspective and take a reflexive (and at times critical) look at the innovation economy, its premises and promises, as well as its implications.

     

    WI001136, Dr. Juhl, STS department, School of Social Sciences and Technology, downtown

  • The goal of the class is to familiarize students with critical perspectives on current mobility patterns and the challenges they present, as well as on sustainable and desirable mobilities and the pathways to get there. The class takes a reflexive and critical look at the relationship between mobility, technology, business, social structure, and culture. After completion of the class, students will be able to situate policies and discourses on mobility, its challenges and its futures with regard to the visions of society and economy that underpin them. They will be able to analyze mobility policies and plans with regard to the different issues that they present and the stakes at hand. Thereby, students will be able to confidently discuss mobility issues in academic, professional and political contexts.

     

    0000003655, Drs. Meinherz and Mögele, STS department, School of Social Sciences and Technology, downtown

  • The course introduces students to advanced principles of innovation management from a sustainable perspective. Students will be equipped with basic knowledge on the design of business models to implement sustainable innovation, role of ecosystems, platforms and networks, as well as advanced methods to generate and implement innovation. Drawing on the UN SDGs, the students will engage in group workshops to personally experience the process of developing and evaluating sustainable innovation activities and to come up with venture ideas in the context of the bioeconomy. These ideas will be pitched to an audience of external experts and discussed in a short white paper.

     

    0000001726 and 0000001019, Prof. Doblinger, Straubing

  • How can sustainable entrepreneurship be studied, and what do we know already on this topic? In this research-focused course, together with their instructors, students will work through the process of sustainable entrepreneurship – including ideation, funding, and impact of sustainable ventures, and the policies that may support them – by studying key articles on the respective topics. In so doing, students will also be qualified to write a Master’s Thesis at the Chair of Corporate Sustainability

     

    WIB14002, Prof. Belz, downtown

  • Do you want to make a difference in the world? Sustainable entrepreneurship may be your opportunity, then! In this course, students learn to develop a sustainable business model, guided by applied frameworks and inspired by guest lectures from successful sustainable entrepreneurs.

     

    WI001165, Prof. Belz, downtown

  • In this course, you become a participating consulting in an existing impact-oriented start-up that has an ambition to scale-up to solve a pressing societal or environmental problem. Each student team is given a challenge to work on. Students also receive lectures and workshop on methods to address these challenges, as well as coaching. In the summer term, the course is in English and usually in collaboration with the LMU Munich, as well as the German Agency for International Collaboration (“GIZ”).

     

    WIB26001, Prof. Alexy, Garching

  • Entwickele in Zusammenarbeit mit Studierenden der School of Social Sciences and Technology Unterricht im Themenbereich Social Entrepreneurship Education für berufliche Schulen. Nehmt die Challenge gemeinsam an und befähigt die Schülerinnen und Schüler vor Ort, nach diesem Ansatz selbst Ideen zu generieren sowie nachhaltige und gemeinnützige Geschäftsmodelle zu entwickeln, die helfen, soziale Probleme durch clevere sowie nachhaltige Ideen zu lösen. Organisiere mit den Schulen zusammen die „Höhle der Löwen!“ und krönt die Ideen mit der besten Wirkung sowie Machbarkeit.

     

    0000001430, Prof. Förster, Education department, School of Social Sciences and Technology, downtown – in German only

  • The Impact Winter School is organized by the Impact for Future initiative. Its purpose is to offer a sprint format by which students learn within a week how to leverage the power of technology to achieve a measurable benefit to society and the planet. Students will learn to assess the benefits and risks of technologies with regard to the generation of social and ecological impact, to understand and apply the concept of impact and its implications, to implement the entrepreneurial innovation process in interdisciplinary teams in order to generate solutions. This year’s Impact Winter School will deal with the topic of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and consists of two preparatory meetings, followed by a 5-days sprint as well as the closing session. All further information can be found on the application page.

     

    MGT001346, Prof. Alexy, Garching, project week

  • In five days, you learn the basics on how to develop innovative customer centric and impact-driven business ideas while working on a challenge from a partner in an interdisciplinary student team. The Sprint is led by student Innovation Facilitators. You will get practical insights, useful templates and tools, constant feedback and opportunities to reflect on your learnings. A great opportunity to get out of your comfort zone, get to know new people and identify innovative ideas with social impact.

     

    MGT001348, UnternehmerTUM, Garching, project week

  • In this course, we will train you how to be a design coach – in turn, as part of the course, you will also be an assistant coach to some of our other formats, such as the Innovation Sprint.

     

    MGT001347, UnternehmerTUM, Garching, project week

Summer term

  • In this course, students go through a design thinking process, get feedback on their prototypes from potential customers through market tests, iterate, do a final presentation that synthesized their journey, and analyze the feasibility of their idea. They also had to write a short reflection paper and a short review of a classic “popular book” on sustainability. Drawing on the UN SDGs as a framing device, students have a relatively free sandbox within that space to come up with venture ideas. Some past ideas included: a) a white labeled gamified platform that could be used by corporates to increase employee engagement around sustainability issues; b) a physical “kiosk” to collect reusable/recycle cups such as RECUP; c) underground vertical farms in metro stations in Europe; d) a platform for day hikers/trippers doing hikes/tours in Bavaria that would partner with local governments and incentivize them to use public transit.

     

    MGT001328, Prof. Vedula, Garching

  • In this course, you become a participating consulting in an existing impact-oriented start-up, usually situated in the Munich Metropolitan area, which is trying to achieve a stronger foothold in the region to develop a more solid business foundation. Each student team is given a challenge to work on. Students also receive lectures and workshop on methods to address these challenges, as well as coaching. In the summer term, the course is in German and usually in collaboration with the University for Applied Sciences (“Hochschule München”).

     

    WIB26001Prof. Alexy, Garching

  • Similar to ‘Winter Impact School’ above.