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The purpose of this study is to highlight the benefits and challenges of immersive, design thinking and community-engaged pedagogies for supporting social innovation within higher education; assess the impact of such approaches across stakeholder groups through long-term retrospective analysis of transdisciplinary and cross-stakeholder work; offer an approach to ecosystems design and analysis that accounts for complex system dynamics in higher education partnerships.

This study uses constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz and Belgrave, 2012) to create a long-term systemic analysis of university innovation efforts. Researchers analysed 37 semi-structured interviews across key stakeholders involved in the design and implementation of the Design Thinking Studio in Social Innovation. Interview subjects include alumni (students), faculty, community partners and administrators. Interviews were coded using constant comparative coding (Mills et al., 2006) to develop and analyse themes. This study includes situated perspectives from the authors who offer their subjective relationship to the Studio’s development.

This paper assesses the outcomes and design of a transdisciplinary cross-stakeholder social innovation program and extends prior research on the potential and challenges of design thinking and immersive pedagogies for supporting service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) practices within higher education. Qualitative interview results reveal how time, resources and other structural and systemic factors operate across stakeholder groups. The findings address a gap in SLCE and social innovation literature by situating community learning within pedagogical interventions constructed not only for the benefit of students but for community members. The authors conclude that the research on social innovation in higher education could benefit from a more intentional examination of longitudinal effects of innovative pedagogical environments across a broad range of stakeholder perspectives and contexts.

This paper identifies how innovative higher education programs are forced to navigate structural, epistemological and ethical quandaries when engaging in community-involved work. Sustainable innovation requires such programs to work within institutional structures while simultaneously disrupting entrenched structures, practices, and processes within the system.

Social innovation in higher education could benefit from harnessing lessons from collective impact and ecosystem design frameworks. In addition, the authors argue higher education institutions should commit to studying longitudinal effects of innovative pedagogical environments across multiple stakeholder perspectives and contexts. This study closes these gaps by advancing an ecosystems model for long-term and longitudinal assessment that captures the impact of such approaches across stakeholder groups and developing an approach to designing and assessing community-involved collaborative learning ecosystems (CiCLE).

Purpose – The study reported here analyzed the meanings that 8-year-old children of different demographic backgrounds constructed about poverty.

Methodology/approach – Six children with different demographic profiles were selected from a larger study for closer examination of their conceptions of poverty (Chafel & Neitzel, 2004, 2005). Content analysis was used to arrive at an in-depth interpretation of the children's ideas expressed in response to a story about poverty and interview questions.

Findings – The children communicated perspectives about poverty that appear to reflect their demographic profiles. Yet, they also shared a common ideology about the poor different from the dominant societal view.

Research implications – By selecting typical children, recognizing the interrelatedness of sources of influence, and considering the data holistically, it was possible to achieve an in-depth understanding of the children's conceptions.

Originality/value of paper – With insight into the more humane conceptions that children have about the poor, adults can take steps to nurture these ideas so that as they grow older children continue to oppose discrimination and challenge the status quo.

The case is designed to be used with the digital business model framework developed by Peter Weill and Stephanie Woerner of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (Weill and Woerner, 2015) and is referred to as the W & W framework. This approach provides a useful structure for thinking through the strategic options facing environments ripe for digital transformation.

Research for this case was conducted through face-to-face interviews with the protagonist, as well as through a review of their business planning documents and other data and documentation provided by the founder. Some of the market and industry data were obtained using secondary research and industry reports. Interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed to ensure accuracy.

The case follows the story of Kurt Waltenbaugh, a Minnesota entrepreneur who shared the dream of using data analytics to reduce costs within the US health-care system. In early 2014, Waltenbaugh and a physician colleague founded Carrot Health to bring together their personal experience and expertise in both consumer data analytics and health care. From the beginning, they focused on how to use data analytics to help identify high-risk/high-cost patients who had not yet sought medical treatment. They believed that they could use these insights to encourage early medical interventions and, as a result, lower the long-term cost of care.

Carrot’s initial success found them in a consultative role, working on behalf of insurance companies. Through this work, they honed their capabilities by helping their clients combine existing claims data with external consumer behavioral data to identify new potential customers. These initial consulting contracts gave Carrot the opportunity to develop its analytic tools, business model and, importantly, to earn some much-needed cash flow during the start-up phase. However, they also learned that, while insurance companies were willing to purchase data insights for one-off market expansion projects, it was much more difficult to motivate them to use data proactively to eliminate costs on an ongoing basis. Waltenbaugh believed that Carrot’s greatest potential lay in their ability to develop predictive models of health outcomes, and this case explores Carrot’s journey through strategic decisions and company transformation.

This case is intended for either an undergraduate or graduate course on entrepreneurial strategy. It provides an effective introduction to the unique structure and constraints which apply to an innovative start-up within the health-care industry. The case also serves as a platform to explore the critical criteria to be considered when developing a digital transformation strategy and exposing students to the digital business model developed by Weill and Woerner (2015) at MIT (referred to in this instructor’s manual as the W&W framework). The case was written to be used in an advanced strategy Master of Business Administration (MBA) class, an undergraduate specialty health-care course or as part of a health-care concentration in a regular MBA, Master of Health Care Administration (MHA) or Master of Public Health (MPH). It may be taught toward the end of a course on business strategy when students are building on generic strategy frameworks and adapting their strategic thinking to the characteristics of specific industries or sectors. However, the case can also be taught as part of a course on health-care innovation in which case it also serves well as an introduction to the health-care payments and insurance system in the USA. Finally, the case can be used in a specialized course on digital transformation strategy in which case it serves as an introduction to the MIT W&W framework.

The case is particularly well-suited to students who are familiar with traditional frameworks for business strategy and business models. The analysis builds on this knowledge and introduces students interested in learning about the opportunities and challenges of digital strategy. Equally, the case works well for students with clinical backgrounds, who are interested in how business strategy can influence changes within the health-care sphere. Finally, an important aspect of the case design was to develop students’ analytical confidence by encouraging them to “get their hands dirty” and to carry out some basic exploratory data analytics themselves. As such, the case requires students to combine and correlate data and to experience the potentially powerful combination of clinical and consumer data. Instructors should find that the insights from these activities give students unique insights into the potential for of data analytics to move health care from a reactive/treatment ethos to a proactive/intervention ethos. This experience can be particularly revealing for students with clinical backgrounds who may initially be resistant to the use of clinical data by commercial organizations.

In the space of 50 years, Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (SQY) has seen a variety of urban development contexts. In the 1970s, the initial master plan revolved around a hierarchical organisation of hubs, and the priority went to the economic question. It also created a specific public road system, along with housing districts endowed with a wide range of amenities to provide a new ‘way of life’. Fifty years later, a number of points typical of SQY’s specific urban nature can be identified. This chapter mentions three of them: an urban ‘dividing line’, the organisation of urbanisation into small towns (urban units) and the aesthetic and environmental qualities of the town. These urban planning qualities have been addressed by the recent Comprehensive Local Development Plan (2016–2018). However, other points such as public transport, driving conditions, nightlife and quality of the green spaces are the topics discussed by experts and citizens in the local conversation.

Given that formal training on autism is still a relatively infrequent occurrence for police officers, the objective of this study is to expose and describe the formal and informal, nonorganizationally based means police officers receive on-the-job training regarding interactions with autistic individuals.

Using personal networks and snowball sampling, the authors interviewed 19 police officers from multiple US police departments who reported having known contact with an autistic individual while on duty. Interviews were transcribed and coded to identify themes describing formal training and informal means to learn about autistic persons during interactions.

The authors find that many officers received formal training on mental health, though few received specific training about autism. Most commonly, officers with a personal connection to autism (e.g. a child or loved one), passed down information and techniques to other officers on how to have positive encounters with autistic individuals. Officers also passed along field knowledge of known autistic individuals in patrol areas/beats to help others have positive interactions. Lastly, community members often assisted officers by sharing information about find where an individual may be located, may live or known personal characteristics/preferences.

Scholars examining police contact with autistic individuals infrequently detail the point of view and needs of officers in successfully interacting with this population. This work adds to this growing discussion by exposing how officers use personal experience, informal training and community members’ assistance as a stopgap for their general lack of training on how to interact with autistic individuals successfully and positively.

Colleges and universities increasingly have the mandate and motivation to integrate sustainability into their curricula. The purpose of this paper is to share the strategy used at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) and provide an evaluation of its success and guidance to others creating similar programs.

This article summarizes Penn’s Integrating Sustainability Across the Curriculum (ISAC) program. ISAC pairs Penn undergraduate research assistants with instructors in a collaborative effort to incorporate sustainability into courses.

In concert with other Penn initiatives (a course inventory, faculty discussion groups and a research network), ISAC increases Penn’s sustainability-related courses and creates dialogue regarding how various disciplines contribute to sustainability.

The program described in this article is replicable at other institutions. The authors demonstrate that the logistics of recruiting students and establishing the program are straightforward. Undergraduate students are on campus; their pay requirements are modest; and they are desirous of such research experiences.

The ISAC program inculcates a cultural and behavioral shift as students and faculty approach sustainability issues collaboratively, and it facilitates the development of a shared language of environmental sustainability. Such social implications are difficult to quantify, but are nonetheless valuable outcomes.

The faculty–student partnership used to facilitate the integration of sustainability into courses at Penn is original. The ISAC program provides a framework for engaging students and faculty in curriculum development around sustainability in a manner that benefits the student research assistants, the participating faculty and future students.