Global Knowledge to Local Practice: Experiential Service Learning Model in International Business and Social Entrepreneurship Education

The Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) is a collaborative effort between several institutions, including universities, companies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from around the world. Students and faculty from each of the participating universities meet for ten days in the host country, where they work in multidisciplinary teams to solve a case and present their solutions to a panel of judges. The pedagogy for GSVC relies on an intensive residential period, which includes a daily combination of faculty-led mentoring sessions, application exercises, breakout sessions, discussion, site visits, project-based learning, service learning and professional presentations. Students are expected to commit 10–12 hours per day in a highly competitive and demanding environment. It promotes organic learning through an immersion experience. In order to solve a local (foreign) social problem, students must understand different political, economic, legal and cultural issues that frame social problems; how to identify them separately; and develop a business solution. GSVC is an excellent example of experiential learning in international business (IB) and/or social entrepreneurship based on the community enquiry model that this chapter develops and proposes. Community enquiry addresses the limitations of the typical service learning model. The traditional service learning model brings students and civil organizations together, but it has rigid boundaries that define who is serving and who is served.