This business and management course, taught by Harvard Business School professor Tarun Khanna, takes an inter-disciplinary approach to understanding and solving complex social problems. You will learn about prior attempts to address these problems across the emerging markets, identify points of opportunity for smart entrepreneurial efforts, and propose and develop your own creative solutions. The focus of this course is on individual agency—what can you do to address a defined problem? The creative process starts with immersion in the problem-at-hand and the harnessing of diverse perspectives. The course then touches on issues related to financing, scaling up of operations, branding, the management of property rights, and the creation of appropriate metrics for assessing progress and social value, in the fast-growing but institutionally compromised settings of emerging markets. The settings are diverse, sectoral (healthcare, online commerce, fintech, infrastructure) and geographic (India and South Asia, China, Africa, Latin America). But the emphasis is less on comprehensive coverage than on developing a way of thinking with a bias-to-action.
An excellent online course offered by edX: how it works
edX courses consist of weekly learning sequences. Each learning sequence is composed of short videos interspersed with interactive learning exercises, where students can immediately practise the concepts from the videos. The courses often include tutorial videos that are similar to small on-campus discussion groups, an online textbook, and an online discussion forum where students can post and review questions and comments to each other and teaching assistants. Where applicable, online laboratories are incorporated into the course.
edX offers certificates of successful completion and some courses are credit-eligible. Whether or not a college or university offers credit for an online course is within the sole discretion of the school. edX offers a variety of ways to take courses, including verified courses where students have the option to audit the course (no cost) or to work toward an edX Verified Certificate (fees vary by course). edX also offers XSeries Certificates for completion of a bundled set of two to seven verified courses in a single subject (cost varies depending on the courses).
An edX learning programme under Other Experiences
