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Learning How to Change the World

Students who are enrolled in the Global Comparative Lens class called Sustainable Global Entrepreneurship are getting a crash course in how to make a difference. The course not only introduces students to the wide range of social and environmental challenges facing our world,

it also teaches them how to apply design thinking methodologies and for-profit business models to solve these pressing issues in innovative ways. The photo essay below provides a brief introduction to this incredibly unique class.

George Kembel and Daniel Epstein prepare to co-teach the first session of SEMS 3500-112, Sustainable Global Entrepreneurship, as the students begin to file in.
“We’re gonna learn by doing,” Daniel Epstein, founder of the Unreasonable Institute, explains. The course takes an innovative approach by enabling students to learn about global entrepreneurship by working with real companies on real problems.
“What is Einstein’s definition of insanity?” professor George Kembel, director of the Stanford d.school, asks. “It’s doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.” Kembel makes a case for why innovation is essential if we expect to solve the problems facing our world.
Mouhsine Serrar, one of the 23 Unreasonable at Sea entrepreneurs on board, does a short pitch about his company and their current needs to a crowded room of nearly 90 enrolled students and an additional 75 curious observers from the shipboard community.
Students sit with the founders of Prakti Design as they explain their technology and its unique selling points. The Prakti stove is the most efficient charcoal stove on the market today, but the team is now looking for ideas on how to scale their innovation globally.
Students share their ideas with Tendekayi Katsiga of Botswana, founder of Solar Ear, following an ideation session about how to make it cool to wear a hearing aid.
A student examines the solar hearing aid charger produced by Solar Ear as he considers possible innovations for the company.
“I think our group contributed to a really good marketing plan,” Bryson Banks, of UCLA says after an ideation session with Spanish entrepreneur, Pedro Tomas Delgado of Aquaphytex. “I think he’s going to be able to implement some of our ideas just from that short break-out session into his work in each port. It felt great to be part of something so much bigger than myself, and something that’s going to meet so many needs.”
Jonas Kehrbaum of Lindenwood University engages in the class discussion following a brainstorm session with the entrepreneurs. “I think this class is the best class of the best educational program on the planet. I knew that Semester at Sea was going to be mind blowing, and when I heard about Unreasonable and about this class, I knew I needed to be a part of it.”
Karla Kreidie El Masri, a student from the University of Virginia, sticks around after class to connect with Abhishek Modi and Venky K.R. who have invented a methodology for sequestering carbon pollution from the atmosphere to make nanotubes that are ten times stronger than steel.

Photos by Danny Askew, Unreasonable Media

Written by: Administrator
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