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Understanding how businesses work is useful no matter what you study or where you want to work. This unit is designed to help you think like a business professional, not by memorising “right answers”, but by learning how to make informed choices when there are several possible options, each with different trade-offs. 

The world you’re entering is complex. Economic pressures, social challenges, and environmental limits are all happening at the same time, and they affect one another. Because of this, business decisions today can’t be based on money alone. They also shape people’s lives, communities, and the planet. 

In this unit, you’ll learn how organisations navigate these tensions in practice. You’ll explore how businesses try to balance financial viability with social responsibility and environmental care, and you’ll build confidence in making thoughtful decisions even when the path forward isn’t clear. The aim is not to turn you into a “startup founder”, but to help you become more enterprising, ethical, and reflective in whatever role you choose. 

Co-requisite units – None. But this unit may not be taken in combination with UCIL22001/UCIL22002 (Essential Enterprise). 

The units aims to support graduate employability by improving awareness and understanding of key business and enterprise principles, while strengthening a public value and community lens.

Syllabus will learn to:

• Identify key enterprise principles that inform contemporary practice.
• Analyse value creation across different organisations, including public value, community benefit and environmental outcomes.
• Evaluate how innovation supports new and improved products and services that meet needs and wants, with attention to inclusion and access.
• Create a structured evidence-based business report in a clear visual narrative format.
• Reflect on enterprise principles and how they shape learning and professional development.

• The intended learning outcomes ensure students develop practical and transferable skills valued by employers. 
• Students practise entrepreneurial thinking by turning insights into opportunities that create value for stakeholders. 
• They strengthen analytical and problem-solving abilities by examining context, constraints, and inclusion, which also supports teamwork and adaptability. 
• Clear communication skills are developed for sharing ideas with diverse audiences, relevant to many professional roles. 
• Decision-making is enhanced through making and justifying trade-offs, preparing students for responsible leadership. 
• Confidence in evidence-based reasoning, persuasive communication, and reflective learning supports lifelong adaptability and professional growth. 

Syllabus (Indicative curriculum content):

• Enterprise as public value, responsible business and shared benefit.
• From insight to opportunity, evidence, lived experience, and context.
• Value creation across organisation types, private, public, third sector, hybrid.
• Systems context, stakeholders, incentives, power, leverage points, unintended consequences.
• Innovation for products, services, programmes, and platforms.
• Practical viability, delivery pathways, partnerships, resourcing, and governance choices.
• Evidence and storytelling, making decision-grade arguments visually.
• Purpose and profit tensions, ethics, boundaries, and impact claims.

The unit objectives are achieved through a mix of lectures, workshops and applied learning:

• 12x 2-hour lectures or workshops, including at least one guest speaker.
• Podcasts of lectures used as appropriate.
• Student led in class and online discussion to support collaborative learning.
• Directed learning activities that introduce key concepts as a base for further work.
• Significant use of case studies and real-world organisational analysis to integrate theory with practice.
• Independent research for assessments, with encouragement to read widely and follow current events.

• Assess the importance of enterprise in society, including public value and shared benefit. 
• Analyse different ways in which value can be created across organisations and communities. 

• Analyse the value edge of a product, service, or idea within its system, considering factors such as uniqueness, sustainability, and responsibility. 
• Evaluate key factors contributing to successful enterprises, including trade-offs and responsible practice. 

• Critically evaluate the reliability and relevance of information sources used to support arguments about enterprise, innovation, sustainability, and responsible practice. 
• Develop an innovative product or service concept, providing a clear justification for its design, delivery pathway, and potential partnerships. 

• Communicate findings and recommendations on enterprise challenges clearly to a professional audience 
• Evaluate the impact of enterprise principles on your own learning and professional development. 

Formative Assessment Task 

This unit is assessment-led and includes regular formative activities that directly contribute to the development of the summative assessments. These weekly tasks are designed to scaffold learning, build evidence, and support students in applying enterprise tools progressively, rather than producing work only at the point of submission. 

Summative Assessment

S1: Visual Business Proposal – 20%

S2: Structured presentation-style report – 60%

S3: Critical Reflection: How enterprise principles and purpose–profit trade-offs have shaped my learning and professional development – 20%

10 working days after submission via Canvas .

• Cohen, B., 2017. Post-capitalist Entrepreneurship: Startups for the 99%. Taylor & Francis. 
• Costanza-Chock, S., 2020. Design justice: Community-led practices to build the worlds we need. The MIT Press. 
• Meadows, D., 2008. Thinking in systems: International bestseller. Chelsea green publishing. 
• Nesta, Development Impact and You (DIY) Toolkit  
• Nesta, 2013. Standards of Evidence: An approach that balances the need for evidence with innovation   
• Ostrom, E., 1990. Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge university press. 
• Porter, M.E. and Kramer, M.R., 2011. Creating Shared Value. HBR. Org Harvard Business Review Jan-Feb. 
• Westhead, P. and Wright, M., 2013. Entrepreneurship: A very short introduction. OUP Oxford.