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University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Sustainable Innovation for Subsistence Marketplaces

This course focuses on understanding subsistence marketplaces and designing business solutions for the billions of people living in poverty in the global marketplace. To develop understanding of these markets, we use exercises to that enable learners to view the world from the eyes of subsistence consumers and entrepreneurs, facilitate bottom‐up understanding generated by participants, and provide insights from extensive research. More broadly, the course uses the context of extreme resource constraints to learn about the bottom-up approach pioneered through the Subsistence Marketplaces Initiative and apply it in broadly. A parallel project will focus on understanding a specific need in a subsistence marketplace, and designing a solution and an enterprise plan for implementation. You will be able to: • Develop an understanding of subsistence marketplaces • Design solutions for subsistence marketplaces • Develop enterprise plans to implement solutions for subsistence marketplaces • Apply the bottom-up approach for subsistence marketplaces and other contexts This course is part of Gies College of Business’ suite of online programs, including the iMBA and iMSM. Learn more about admission into these programs and explore how your Coursera work can be leveraged if accepted into a degree program at https://degrees.giesbusiness.illinois.edu/idegrees/.

Status: Market Research
Status: Needs Assessment
BeginnerCourse45 hours

Featured reviews

GP

5.0Reviewed Apr 15, 2019

Great course with multiple great learning resources. The professor is passionate and goes above and beyond to present the course and experience.

RR

5.0Reviewed Jun 18, 2020

Wonderful presentation, this course truly gives the insight to subsistence living around the world that is not the topic of kitchen table conversations but ought to be!

RS

4.0Reviewed Aug 24, 2020

The subject is very relevant in view of the SDGs and the instructor is passionate, involved, dedicated and interesting. But it is a bit repetitive and the grades take too long too come.

BM

5.0Reviewed Aug 24, 2020

I will carry this experience with me throughout the rest of my career and life. This was a touching and fulfilling class and I highly recommend it to any professions.

PS

4.0Reviewed Jul 5, 2020

It is a course which helps in better understanding of the problems , needs from bottom level

All reviews

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