Academic Courses

Below are courses that are available to Yale students interested in global health innovation and entrepreneurship. Please contact the instructor directly for more information:

Social Entrepreneurship Lab is a practice-based course in which students from across campus form interdisciplinary teams to work on a social challenge of their choice. Teams include students from SOM, SPH, YDS, School of the Environment, Jackson, and other schools and programs. Students start by identifying a topic area of focus, then form teams based on shared interests and complementary skills. Over the course of thirteen weeks, student teams delve into understanding the challenge through root cause analysis, research on existing solutions and populations affected, then apply human-centered design thinking and systems thinking to design, prototype, test, and iterate solutions. Using tools such as the theory of change, logframe, business canvas, and social marketing strategy, teams build and test their impact models, operational models, and revenue models. Readings and assignments from the textbook Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship are used to guide this journey. These include technical templates, case studies, and interviews with social entrepreneurs and thought leaders in different sectors and geographies around the world. Prerequisite: MGT 631/HPM 631; MGT 421; or one of the following electives: MGT 865, MGT 621, or MGT 874. Students who have not taken one of these courses must demonstrate experience with innovation and entrepreneurship either through professional experience or participation in extra-curricular programming through Innovate Health Yale (IHY at SPH), Center for Business and the Environment (CBEY at YSE), Program on Social Enterprise (PSE at SOM), Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (CCAM), Dwight Hall, or Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (CITY).

Students apply the ten stage framework of the textbook Social Entrepreneurship: Building Impact Step by Step to innovate new solutions for host organizations. Host organizations are social enterprises or other social purpose organizations based globally and locally who present Yale students with a problem statement to work on over the course of one term. This could include creating new programs or products, reaching new populations, measuring the impact of existing work, creating new communications tools for existing work, or other challenges. Students gain social innovation and entrepreneurship experience and host organizations benefit from students’ problem solving. Students from all programs and concentrations at Yale are welcome to join Jackson students in forming interdisciplinary teams to tackle social challenges. This course runs during the same time as Social Entrepreneurship Lab. The key distinction is that in the former, students pick their own topic to research and ideate on; whereas in this course, students work on projects for host organizations. Jackson students may elect to follow up on this course with a summer internship to the host organization, to help support implementation of their solution, if the host organization and the School administration accepts their application.

This course combines needs assessment methods, user-centered design principles, and an agile approach to designing digital health tools for consumers. The class environment is designed to model that of a health tech start-up. Students are expected to apply what they learn from the lectures and readings to identify a pain point (i.e., a problem or need faced by a prospective user) and solicit input from intended users to design a prototype of the digital health tool. Solutions are presented in class to receive feedback on the design and to iteratively refine a prototype in order to create a minimum viable product. Prerequisite: BIS 560/CB&B 740, SBS 574, or permission of the instructor.

This course aims to familiarize students with the principles and practice of innovation and entrepreneurship in the context of public health, as defined by the well-being of society, focusing on social and environmental determinants of health. We examine a set of public health challenges within the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), using a hybrid method combining case studies and assignments. Case studies provide an opportunity to analyze cross-cutting challenges faced by innovators and entrepreneurs in the field of public health. Assignments allow students to dig deeper into specific topic areas within public health innovation and entrepreneurship. The target audience for this course includes graduate and undergraduate students in the MBA, MAM, MPH, and other programs at Yale SOM, the School of Public Health, and across campus. The course is a precursor, but not a prerequisite, for ENV 632/MGT 612, where students design ventures tackling social challenges through new or existing organizations. Not open to auditors. Half a Course cr HTBA.

The course will give students a broad and practical understanding of identifying unmet medical needs and developing a business plan for new ventures in healthcare and medicine, including healthcare delivery, healthcare IT, digital health, medical devices, and surgical techniques. Students will learn how to assess market opportunities, identify the patient population, build interdisciplinary teams, and create a business strategy in any area of healthcare. The course will enable students to apply course lessons to real-world settings.

Students will work both in the class and the hospital in small teams from the perspective of a start-up company to clearly define a business strategy for a new venture. Exercises will include interviewing potential customers within the healthcare community to gain a broad understanding of user needs and conclude with presenting your new venture to the class.

The course is designed for a diverse student body of graduate and undergraduate students across management, science, law, public health, medicine, and others. To be clear, this class is an academic exercise, and no ownership of a venture is implied from participation.