BA 670: Designing Equitable Enterprises
Resources and News
This course received an Aspen Business & Society Ideas Worth Teaching Award in recognition of its expansive purpose, innovative thinking, and integrated, multi-disciplinary approach.
Jerry Davis delivers lecture on creating green energy and equitable enterprise
U-M students create equitable business models for green energy businesses in Detroit
U-M graduate students showcase sustainability ideas for Detroit small businesses
SBN Detroit: Helping Detroiters Create New Businesses for a More Equitable World
The interdisciplinary +Impact Studio graduate course BA670 prepares students to be architects of an equitable, just, and sustainable future. You’ll gain a mindset, a process, and a set of tools and experiences for developing impactful solutions to societal challenges. The course combines the management principles and acumen of business with design tools and research insights to help you become an impact designer, while developing an innovation toolkit desired by top employers across industries.
Registration for the course opens in early November and closes in January yearly.
Faculty
Jerry Davis
This course is taught by Jerry Davis, the Gilbert and Ruth Whitaker Professor of Business Administration at the Ross School of Business and Professor of Sociology, The University of Michigan. Davis received his PhD from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. Davis’s research is broadly concerned with the corporation as a social and economic vehicle.
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Some of his recent writings examine why corporations have so little insight into their global supply chains and the moral dilemmas this poses; why the social network of corporate elites has fallen apart; what organizational alternative exist to the shareholder-owned corporation; how national institutions shape corporate structures, and what this means for income inequality; how platform capitalism might be tamed to meet human needs other than profit; how management research might help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals; how new technologies have enabled worker political activism within the corporation; and how information and communication technologies have enabled entirely new designs for economic organization. His current book project examines corporate power in the 21st century, and how to tame it.
Cat Johnson
In her role as managing director of the Business+Impact Initiative, Cat leads the team in their work across the school and the University to develop and support impact-related activities. Her career spans nonprofit, social enterprise, and higher education leadership, with a focus in workforce development. Prior to joining the Business+Impact team, Cat was Chief Operating Officer at Detroit-based social enterprise Empowerment Plan. She has also worked previously at the Ross School of Business on social enterprise and social innovation programming, and with social enterprises in the U.S. and around the world. Catherine earned a BA, MBA, and MSW from the University of Michigan.
“Diversity in teams leads to innovation. In the +Impact Studio course, I had the unique opportunity to work with other grad students on campus. We were able to bring our own perspectives and bridge broader ideas together to design solutions for communities affected by COVID-19."
— Katarina Chan (MBA ‘21)