Technology Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development

Among the transformational forces shaping our world are two concurrent trends that continue to change the way we look at problems, and how we approach solutions. The first spans ubiquitous and user-friendly technologies that sync with the learning patterns and attention span of a digitally savvy generation. The second comprises a rising demand for enterprise-led solutions for problems confronting sustainable development, along with severe mobility restrictions emerging from the COVID pandemic. For educators, this dual trend combines challenges and opportunities. This chapter explores whether it is possible to re-invent traditional pedagogies, not only to overcome conventional constraints but also to chart a high-quality learning experience that balances concepts and practice to equip students with practical skills. The contributors examine the Social Business Model Canvas as a case study, to describe how trends in technology and demand for entrepreneurship education, constrained by mobility, can be adapted to meet emerging demands.

In response to society’s need for innovation and social impact, universities around the world have realized the importance and potential benefits of incorporating entrepreneurship education into their curricula. Entrepreneurship education requires a multi-disciplinary approach with a strong practicum component, involving industry partners. Technology entrepreneurship education requires strong collaboration with engineering education programs. This chapter discusses entrepreneurship education for undergraduate engineering students. Based on a systematic literature review, we identified various approaches to entrepreneurship and tradeoffs between forms of offerings, including major, minor, short courses, etc. Furthermore, we evaluated and compared the entrepreneurship education components at major institutions in the world. Since technology entrepreneurship is now a global means of sustainable development, the findings of this study may help design entrepreneurship education programs in developing countries at the undergraduate level, especially for engineering students.

Since entrepreneurship plays an important part in the business world and economic development, there have been efforts to develop theories for the success of entrepreneurship. Business Model Canvas (BMC), one of the most successful and widely adopted business model archetypes, helps validate a start-up business idea. However, this powerful tool was developed and tested in the context of western world businesses, primarily in USA and Europe. Its popularity and adoption in the context of Chinese and Asian businesses are not clear. To discover the actual adoption situation from an academic perspective and figure out the gaps in this topic, a systematic literature review (SLR) was carried out. By going through the main idea of each short-listed article in the content analysis, some gaps are figured out. Considering the applicability and effectiveness of BMC in analyzing existing businesses, there exist gaps in assessing the efficiency and effectiveness of Chinese and Asian businesses. Current literature lacks studies on the validations of a startup idea using BMC and other BMC-adopted new models, especially from the perspectives of social businesses and the cultural context in regions, such as Asia.

Global entrepreneurship sustainability focuses on meeting not only the needs of the present stakeholders in innovation and entrepreneurship but also those of future generations. Based on the objective of entrepreneurship that is inspired by the ultimate purpose of the development of human society together with the roles of incubator in addressing challenges encountered by entrepreneurs, this chapter sets forth the driving force of ecosystem evolution and its objectives in entrepreneurship as well as the characteristics of an evolving ecosystem contributing to global entrepreneurship sustainability. It encourages an incubator/accelerator to frame decisions in terms of technology transfer, industrial development as well as economic and social impact for the long term, rather than on short-term profits as practiced by neoBay in Shanghai-China, which not only serves as the local ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship as the application layer with zero distance to university to activate regional vitality but also co-works with its international partners on the ecosystem for global collaboration and resourcing through three phases—Bilateral Modality (Internationalization 1.0), Multiple Modality (Internationalization 2.0) and Inter-Ecosystem Modality (Internationalization 3.0), which starts to boost collaboration between Asia and Europe in terms of innovation and entrepreneurship.

There has been a surge in STEAM education for K-12 students since the beginning of the twenty-first century. This chapter sheds light on the current state of this relatively new but rapidly growing field of education through a case study of STEAM education startups in Shanghai, China. We begin by summarizing general discussions on the key characteristics of STEAM education that distinguish it from traditional school education through a literature review. Three identified characteristics are (1) the focus on real-world problem-solving, (2) the utilization of project-based learning methods, and (3) the emphasis on interdisciplinary principles. These key characteristics form the basis for evaluating the STEAM program in China. For the analysis of its viability as a business, we first analyze the business model using Business Model Canvas followed by an analysis of the business environment within which it operates. The study concludes by drawing implications regarding practical implementation of the STEAM program as a business in China.

Mukti is a socio-economic organization, working in the domain of health, education, agriculture, livelihood, environment, rights, and disaster management, operating in Sundarbans, the largest delta, and a rural community in South Asia. Mukti surveyed different islands in 2005 with education rates as low as 20 percent and identified education as a possible game changer in the communities of Sundarbans in West Bengal state of India. Different educational and support programs covering elementary education to post-graduation levels have been developed for underprivileged students across rural communities, supplementing the existing educational system. To close the gaps between education and employability, vocational training and placement organizations have been established through the cooperation of volunteers from all over the world using digital platforms.

With the accelerated pace of technological innovation, many local and international corporations have been entering into e-Marketplace, launching new business models, and constantly generating new ideas for serving the society. The rising labor costs of business necessitate the exploitation of the evolving e-Business technologies for the optimal utilization of corporate donations. Such technologies have transformed the B2B global marketing of products and services from developing countries, as seen from the success of the Alibaba group in China. The purpose of this study is to develop a B2B social e-Business (SeB) model and subsequent implementation of a digital platform to facilitate donations from donors to eligible recipients all over the world. A case study has been presented to illustrate the practical feasibility of the model.

Mobile technologies (symbolized by the ubiquitous mobile phone) offer many opportunities for entrepreneurship as evidenced from thousands of apps made available through the appstores. This chapter discusses the role of entrepreneurship through the development and deployment of innovative mobile apps for motivating people to follow a healthy lifestyle, e.g., giving up smoking. The chapter highlights emerging multi-disciplinary innovative techniques, such as Persuasive System Design (PSD) in the development of such mobile apps. Similar innovations are happening in various other applications related to healthy living, such as exercising, diet management, and health condition monitoring. Lastly, this chapter also shows that entrepreneurship is now widely embraced not only for profits, but also for social service. Hence many mobile apps (e.g., for smoking cessation) are encouraging social entrepreneurship.

Climate change is posing as major challenge for sustainable development. Achieving sustainable development requires action across multiple dimensions beyond climate change mitigation goals. Recognising non-climate-related benefits of climate action and purposefully considering them in the policy process can address the two issues together and simultaneously deliver climate change mitigation and sustainable development goals. This article explores the possible linkages and synergies between climate action and SDGs and how best to establish those linkages in the policy process to attain synergies by activating co-benefits. Presenting the main findings of a broader study focusing on use of ‘co-benefits approach’ by local government in Australia in their efforts to link climate action with local development policy goals it suggests measures that could assist policymakers to purposefully consider, plan, generate and activate co-benefits to link climate action with local development goals. The article concludes by discussing policy implications of the findings, the transferability of the research to settings outside Australia and possible direction for future research.

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–30 has stressed on public and private investments for empowering the social, economic and cultural resilience of the communities, and suggests that these investments could be the driver of innovation, growth, and job creation. Social entrepreneurship is an emerging field with over 40 million global workforces and holding significant shares in the gross domestic product of countries such as the United Kingdom and France. Despite growing popularity, Social Entrepreneurship is still new in disaster risk reduction. This chapter attempts to provide key learning on social enterprises, its characteristics, from literature study. The authors have undertaken a systematic review of key pieces of literature to promote a conceptual framework. Further, the authors have applied the framework on selected case studies from India in disaster management to derive key insights for social entrepreneurship. The outcome of the study is to derive effective instrument for characterization of social entrepreneurship, and to promote a way forward.

Global climate change is leading to rising and accelerating sea level that threatens communities in low-lying coastal areas. One particular vulnerability is the intrusion of seawater into coastal aquifers. The resulting salinization of groundwater and surface water resources exposes coastal communities to multiple hazards, including health risks associated with elevated salt intake through drinking water from these resources. This chapter discusses two technology development projects that spanned China and Bangladesh to measure and map out the salinity of underground water, which is the dominant source of drinking water in coastal Bangladesh. The projects were led by two groups of Year-Four university engineering students and entailed first the design of a low-cost salinity data logger, then followed by the development of geographical information system-based mobile app with capabilities for real-time salinity and weather data updates and spatial data visualization. The projects improved student awareness of the impacts of engineering designs on the global challenges of climate change and public health and inculcated in them an interest in technology for sustainable development.

Rapid urbanization around the world has come with problems such as environmental degradation, stress on resources due to increasing demand, incompetent or incompatible supply mechanisms, and lack of strong governance. On top of these grievances, urban communities are highly vulnerable to disaster and environmental impacts. Hence, in addressing these problems, urban development should lean towards a data-driven approach, especially accounting for citizen- generated data and technologies. The paper showcases how volunteered geographic information is being used in solving critical urban issues, particularly disaster risk reduction and environmental management. This chapter instigates the motivation in the contribution, challenges, and sustainability of citizen-generated data in the context of Nepal from campaigns such as: mapping in OpenStreetMap, urban street lights mapping, and urban tree mapping. Additionally, the paper highlights how these datasets are being used to draw the attention of the policymakers and unlock the potential of data-driven decision-making to solve urban issues.

The chapter engages in exploring possibilities of innovation and use of future technology arising from multistakeholder collaboration in essential societal functions such as public services, critical infrastructure systems and public policy arena. Multistakeholder collaboration is the key to adaptation and resilience amidst the fast-changing twenty-first century world around us. Owing to increased interconnectedness and interdependencies of complex socio-technical systems, critical infrastructures and essential services, our socio-technical relationships have also grown more complex. On one hand, the tightly coupled systems, services and infrastructures are highly optimized while on the other, because of their high optimization and tightly coupled nature, these systems are often more prone to catastrophic disruptions and crises. So, what is the way forward to effectively increase adaptation and resilience? The chapter engages in the discussion of boundary spanning activities such as the essential public services where multistakeholder collaboration among various actors, i.e., public, private, academia and the industry is inevitable due to cross-cutting issues, demands and challenges. With examples of successful cases and evidence from scientific literature, the chapter makes a convincing case in favour of multistakeholder collaboration as a powerful tool to raise societal resilience.

This chapter examines the development, applications, and future scope of technology entrepreneurship in wildfire risk management. The first section outlines key wildfire risk trends worldwide by highlighting how infrastructure losses and ecosystem damages from wildfires continue to increase significantly each year with lasting impacts on community wellbeing and sustainable development outcomes. The section underlines the imperative for greater technology applications in wildfire risk management, hereafter referred to as ‘FireTech’. The second section assesses key areas of progress and challenges in wildfire risk management and shows how FireTech is contributing to effective wildfire risk management across four key priorities for action aligned with the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015–2030). The final section shows how technology entrepreneurship in FireTech is being enabled by a range of factors, including greater policy and legislative commitment and the increasing availability of state, philanthropic, and private investment funds. The chapter concludes by outlining how FireTech can develop in ways that are just, inclusive, and responsive to disaster risk reduction and sustainable development goals.

Water is imperative for all human beings and other lives on the earth. While access to safe drinking water is recognized as a part of human rights, there are a lot of people who have challenges in ensuring safe water in the world. The lack of safe water exercises a negative impact on health by causing diarrhea diseases which is one of the most serious killer diseases of under-five children in developing countries. In addition to health, a lot of studies point out that toward poverty reduction, improvement of the access to safe water is a critical agenda. Furthermore, the challenges in gaining safe water negatively impact the education opportunities of children in developing countries. Various studies point out that there is a significant link between the access to safe water and the school attendance of children, particularly girls. In terms of access to safe water, its impact on livelihoods must not be ignored. In providing safe water in developing countries, affordable and sustainable technologies, in other words appropriate technologies, should be used while sustainability of the service is crucial. In this way, access to safe water in developing countries, rural areas in particular, remains a challenge and the sustainable service model is needed based on the appropriate technology which is suitable for the local context. Therefore, this study discussed the impact and the sustainability of the water supply service in rural areas of Bagamoyo, Tanzania, operated by a Japanese small-medium enterprise, “Poly-Glu Social Business.” The company installed a water plant using affordable water flocculants and recruited the plant staff from the local community. The multi-sectoral studies were conducted by assessing the health, livelihood, and education impacts by comparing the intervention and control villages in the study areas. As a result, this study found a positive impact on health, livelihood, and education in the intervention village such as the reduction of the water-related diseases, reduction of the time for water fetching by the school children, and allocating the spare time for livelihood activities instead of using the time for the water fetching. On the other hand, this study also found that the inequality in the availability of the water services in the intervention village is due to the long distance from the water plant. For further expansion of the water services and the service sustainability, this study pointed out the collaboration of the local education hubs for entrepreneurship.

In the dawn of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) shaped by Artificial Intelligence (AI) blockchain, Internet of Things, multiverse, and quantum computing, the emphasis on creativity and innovation, entrepreneurship, and technology development also affect the ways the so-called non-profit sectors design and implement development and humanitarian programmes in developing countries like Nepal. Following the 2015 Nepal Earthquake Response, World Vision International Nepal (WVI Nepal) has ideated, prototyped, and scaled up community-focused innovative solutions like SIKKA, KITAB Bazar, and Participatory Disaster Risk Assessment (PDRA) tools integrated into its development and humanitarian initiatives. SIKKA uses blockchain technology to ensure cash and voucher distributions are transparent and trackable, and the system has been used to assist 92,788 people during the COVID-19 response. Similarly, KITAB Bazar, an online marketplace platform, has served 53,412 children in 831 community schools by providing 133,008 supplementary reading books in local languages through the platform. Likewise, the PDRA tool capacitates communities to identify disaster-prone areas and engage stakeholders for response through mobile applications.