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INTEREST CATEGORY: GLOBAL MARKETING
POSTING TYPE: Events

Posted by: Madhu Viswanathan

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,
Institute For Business Ethics and Sustainability,
College of Business Administration,
Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles

Presents

�ճ����Business For Good / Subsistence Marketplaces��Educators Orientation Workshop

Online (via Zoom) – Free; Registration Required

February 17, 9-10 am Central USA Time

February 24, 9-10 am Central USA Time

April 13, 9-10 am Central USA Time

April 27, 9-10 am Central USA Time

May 4, 9-10 am Central USA Time

May 11, 9-10 am Central USA Time

Please sign up for multiple time slots as we may cancel sessions with low attendance.

What is this workshop about?

To provide an introductory orientation by sharing content and methods with educators on the unique bottom-up approach to teaching Business For Good and subsistence marketplaces.

The Business For Good course at Loyola Marymount University (“LMU”), College of Business Administration (“CBA”) covers a structured semester-long project focused on grand challenges and specifically understanding and designing a solution and a business plan for subsistence marketplaces while meeting the triple bottom line.

We have developed and delivered this course to thousands of students while overseeing hundreds of semester-long group projects. Rather than using a top-down approach, our program uses a unique bottom-up approach that intentionally centers on the individuals or communities at the micro-level. This approach is particularly valuable as we seek to understand contexts of poverty and how to directly engage those individuals at every stage of the business solution process.

The broader bottom-up approach evolved through the subsistence marketplaces stream,��pioneered at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and extended to Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles. Educational experiences through this stream have reached almost a thousand students annually for the last 15 years and educational content is used by educators around the world.

We are humbled to share a recent recognition for the course with��a Responsible Business Education award from the Financial Times��for 2024. Ours is one of��five courses from around the world and the only from the US for this year. The specific article is here –��

The Business for Good program was established with a significant gift from the D.K. Kim Foundation to design and disseminate Business for Good learning experiences, and to provide marketplace literacy for low-income youth.

Sample content at –��

Why should I participate?

To learn about our unique bottom-up approach to teaching Business for good encompassing a semester long project

To learn about and get access to:

• cutting-edge bottom-up educational content developed in subsistence marketplaces, such as 360 videos, poverty simulations, day-in-the-Life videos, image-based immersion exercises, etc.
• slide decks and all related course content
• structured project deliverables
• playable videos

To stimulate your thinking to create a learning assignment or experience, a module, a part of a course or an entire course

To learn about service learning experiences through marketplace literacy

To accomplish any or all of the above

Who can apply and how? Is there a fee? What can we expect as follow-up?

The workshop is free but registration is required by clicking��

All follow-up workshops will also be free. Depending on interest, we are following up with a longer workshop that helps participants as they use the material. We will also be developing forums to provide small group or individual support for those who wish to experiment with and/or adopt any part of our approach.

Our role is to be a resource for you as it relates to using this content and methods in your educational experiences.

Background Information On The Bottom-Up Approach To Subsistence Marketplaces

Since its origin, subsistence marketplace research has accumulated a substantial body of knowledge paralleling other approaches to poverty, such as the capabilities approach and base-of-the-pyramid research, providing unique and complementary insights. The term “subsistence marketplaces” was deliberately coined to reflect the need to study these marketplaces across resource and literacy barriers in their own right, beyond being new markets for companies. Unique to this stream of work is its bottom-up approach, which is reflected in the research, education, and practice that has taken shape.��The symbiotic academic-social enterprise was pioneered at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and extended to Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, with the parallel social enterprise entitled the Marketplace Literacy Project (MLP).��More information on the Subsistence Marketplaces Initiative can be found at��

Background Information On D.K. Kim Foundation Business For Good Program

The D.K. Kim Foundation Business for Good Program, housed within the Institute for Business Ethics and Sustainability at LMU College of Business Administration, opens individuals’ minds to new ways of thinking about business, informed by our Jesuit and Marymount values and decades of pioneering research. The program aligns with the CBA mission��“to��advance knowledge and develop business leaders with moral courage and creative confidence to be a force for good in the global community.”

Program Objectives

The D.K. Kim Foundation Business for Good Program is distinct and builds on our experience with three objectives:

1. Expand Business for Good learning experiences to LMU students, faculty, staff and other stakeholders.
2. Share our Business for Good approach with educators across the globe to impact education in developing and emerging economies.
3. Create global virtual platforms for youth and communities on Business for Good and marketplace literacy.

Background Information On The Business For Good Course

The Business for Good course is a one-of-a-kind, new to the world,��learning experience that has reached about 2500 undergraduate students in the last three years since its introduction. An immersive and interactive experience, it was offered online during the pandemic and now in a hybrid format. It involves the major global challenges, i.e., poverty and the environment, that students will face in their careers, reflecting several UN SDGs. It brings out the role of business as a force for good in addressing these challenges. It involves a semester-long group project where students design a business plan to launch a product for low-income customers in domestic or international markets (referred to as subsistence marketplaces), while achieving the triple bottom line. It involves doing good as being at the heart of the business rather than as corporate social responsibility and exploring personal values about doing good in the professional and personal realms. An in-person poster session is attended by a wide audience, with judges from the university, and outside. All first-year and transfer undergraduate students start out their education by confronting these grand challenges to sustainable development.

Central to the experience is the importance of balancing economic with environmental and social sustainability. Consequently, students must confront the reality of trade-offs and develop an exchange model without subsidies, corporate social responsibility, or donations and match financials to support their approach. The focus is on a business rather than a non-profit or other entity as being the startup. All projects are carefully guided to emphasize this relationship between financial goals and larger societal goals.

The course brings to life the notion that exposure��is��education. In addition to lecture-discussions, students complete bottom-up experiential exercises using image-based immersion, day-in-the-life videos, 360 videos, poverty simulations, and perspective videos. Students interview people living in poverty in four continents and review recorded interviews to hear firsthand accounts. Done individually or in groups, it engenders understanding about unfamiliar contexts, ideation and design of solutions, and development of sustainable, global business plans. Such exercises provide exposure to global contexts that are different culturally and socioeconomically. To implement this course, we have semi-dedicated field teams in different continents to assist with virtual interviews and help produce virtual content.

Students learn a unique bottom-up approach that counterbalances the traditional top-down approach. The academic foundation is from the stream on subsistence marketplaces with a bottom-up orientation (��). Bottom-up connotes ground level reality rather than the opposite top-down of what is already known. Its aim is to move learners from sympathy to informed empathy and broaden their global horizons.��Parallel to this stream has been the design and delivery of marketplace literacy education to low-income communities around the world.

Based on this learning experience, the Business for Good program was established at Loyola Marymount University with a significant gift from the D.K. Kim Foundation to design and disseminate Business for Good learning experiences to educators and learners worldwide, and Marketplace Literacy to low-income youth, thereby deepening the educational experience and increasing the program’s impact on students and communities around the globe.