Essential Enterprise: Responsibility and Shared Solutions for People and Planet

UCIL22002

This unit will be delivered face-to-face in semester 2 in 2026/7.

• Level 2
• 10 Credits
• Masood Entrepreneurship Centre (Alliance Manchester Business School)

This unit forms part of the Enterprise Challenge.

This unit aims to support graduate employability by strengthening students’ awareness of key business and enterprise principles, with a clear emphasis on public value, community benefit, and responsible practice in complex real-world contexts.

Students will learn to:

• Identify core enterprise principles that inform contemporary practice across sectors
• Analyse how value is created and shared across different organisations and communities, including public value, social outcomes, and environmental benefit
• Evaluate how innovation supports new and improved products and services that meet needs, with attention to inclusion, access, and unintended consequences
• Create a structured, evidence-based report that communicates clearly through a coherent visual narrative
• Reflect on enterprise principles, trade-offs, and how these shape learning and professional development

• Introduction to enterprise for social challenges
  What enterprise means in this unit, beyond narrow startup stereotypes. Enterprise as creating value for people, place, and planet.
• From problems to opportunities
  Identifying meaningful real-world problems, unmet needs, and why context matters.
• Empathy, users, and lived experience
  Understanding who is affected, what they experience, and why problem framing matters.
• Value without growth
  Exploring value in broader terms than profit alone, including social, ecological, and experiential value.
• Alternatives and value proposition
  Clarifying what your idea offers, for whom, how it differs from existing alternatives, and why that difference matters.
• Stakeholders, ecosystems, and commons
  Mapping who is involved, how value flows, and how ideas depend on partners, systems, and relationships.
• Business model thinking
  Understanding how an idea creates, delivers, and captures value, and how different business model tools relate.
• Finance 1: unit economics and startup costs
  Defining units, variable and fixed costs, contribution margin, break-even, startup costs, pricing stances, and cash timing.
• Finance 2: reach, revenue, and impact
  Thinking about honest reach, revenue logic, market wedge, impact targets, and balancing purpose with realism.
• From tools to coherent story
  Turning weekly analysis into a clear venture story rather than a collection of disconnected frameworks.
• Reflection, EntreComp, and enterprise capability
  Using self-assessment and reflection to understand strengths, growth areas, trade-offs, and next actions.
• Assessment support and drop-ins
  In the later weeks, supported workshops and drop-ins help students refine their slide deck, and reflection.

The course unit’s objectives will be achieved through a number of learning and teaching methods in order to maximise the learning experience of students:

• 10 x 2 hr lectures or workshops including at least one guest speaker
• Podcasts of lectures will be used as appropriate
• Student led class and on-line discussion will allow constructive and collaborative learning
• Teaching material and directed learning activity will introduce key concepts and principles to students as a basis for further work
• Significant use of case studies /real world organisational analysis will be used to encourage integration and synthesis of theory with practice
• Learning resources will enrich the scope of the module content and introduce a broad number of examples and perspectives to the candidates
• Students will be expected to engage in individual learning through research for their assessment and further develop their independent learning skills

Reading widely and following current events is positively encouraged as this enables analysis of key events and the ability to predict the impact that they will have on business organisations, individuals, non-profit organisations and governments throughout the world.

• Assessment 1: Business proposal as an Infographic Placemat (new business idea or improvement to an existing product/service offer), equivalent to 500 words, 20% of unit, due Week 5.
• Assessment 2: Opportunity Analysis as a 15-slide deck report (excluding cover slide), showing use of opportunity analysis, business modelling, and financial tools, 1500 words, 60% of unit.
• Assessment 3: Reflection on Balancing Purpose and Profit, including a Triple Bottom Line Impact Target Framework, 500 words, 20% of unit.

Dr. Suneel Kunamaneni

The Enterprise Challenge combines enterprise UCIL units with a community-based enterprise project.

Essential Enterprise is one of the 10 credit enterprise UCIL units you can study as part of completion of this challenge.

UCIL units are designed to be accessible to undergraduate students from all disciplines.

UCIL units are credit-bearing and it is not possible to audit UCIL units or take them for additional/extra credits. You must enrol following the standard procedure for your School when adding units outside of your home School.

If you are not sure if you are able to enrol on UCIL units you should contact your School Undergraduate office. You may wish to contact your programme director if your programme does not currently allow you to take a UCIL unit.