From Utopia to Sustainable Entrepreneurship: a Novel Case Methodology
Photo by Dylan Gillis on Unsplash
By Karin Wigger; Asssociate Professor Nord University, Ingebjørg Vestrum; Researcher Nord University, Fufen Jin; Researcher NTNU, and Sølvi Solvoll; Associate Professor Nord University
Sustainable entrepreneurship education (SEE) equips students to drive sustainability efforts, requiring diverse teaching methods and tools. Live cases—real, current organizational challenges—are used in entrepreneurship and sustainability education and show promise for teaching sustainable entrepreneurship in higher education. However, their application in SEE remains unclear.
About the Article
The article is based on Chapter 12: From Utopia to sustainable entrepreneurship: a novel case methodology, from the book REFRAMING THE CASE METHOD IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION.
It provides a theoretical foundation, presents a how-to guide of the method, and discusses how various activities can enhance the approach. We present our utopia-realizing methodology as an example of how to integrate elements from sustainability and entrepreneurship education using the live case method. Traditionally, it is the case owner and the problems/challenges the case builds on that are introduced as first stage of the case activities. In utopia realizing, the students are first doing a wishful-thinking scenario of the case context (i.e. utopia)—for example, the industry in a region—before the case is introduced.
The live case method enables shifting between timeframes, integrating future-oriented elements into past and present narratives. This makes it well-suited for teaching sustainable entrepreneurship, as both fields focus on shaping the future. Sustainability envisions a better future, setting boundaries for value creation, while entrepreneurship acts on opportunities to generate future value and drive change.
Background and Pedagogical Approach
To act entrepreneurially for a better future, students must develop foresight, normative competence, and entrepreneurial skills. To support this, we designed a live case methodology incorporating Levitas’s (2013) utopia as a method, allowing students to first envision their ideal sustainable future before engaging with a live case that aligns with their vision. This approach integrates the visionary and normative aspects of sustainability with entrepreneurial action.
Utopia-realizing blends entrepreneurship and sustainability education through the live case method, structured around three key principles:
(1) utopia as a method to address sustainability’s normative aspects
(2) systems thinking to navigate the complexities of real-world cases
(3) a design-thinking-inspired process to enhance students’ entrepreneurial mindset and skills.
The following sections explore these three foundations in detail.
Utopia has been a political focus since the environmental movement of the 1960s and is an established teaching method in future and sustainability studies. It has been interpreted in various ways. We adopt Levitas’s (2013) perspective, viewing utopia as a creative practice that integrates social, environmental, and economic dimensions into an imagined sustainable future before identifying actions to achieve it.
For example, the Amsterdam City Doughnut applies doughnut economics to reshape social structures toward a visionary future. Utopia, therefore, examines an idealized distant future while keeping the present in mind. As a method, it enhances the live case approach by fostering foresight and normative competencies—key to sustainability education—shifting students’ focus from current problems to envisioning and working toward a desired sustainable future.
Sustainable entrepreneurship competences overlap with traditional commercial entrepreneurship skills but also involve key differences. Students must be equipped to tackle complex societal challenges that intertwine environmental, economic, social, and ethical dimensions within a broader system of stakeholders. This requires both an understanding of systemic societal structures and the ability to act as change agents, developing innovative business models that integrate sustainability principles.
Rather than focusing solely on existing problems, resources, and technologies provided by case owners, students should first envision a desired sustainable society and then determine how their case can contribute through creative solutions. While identifying sustainable problems and solutions is gaining traction in entrepreneurship education, sustainability is often treated as just another challenge to address. Most programs simply add sustainable elements to traditional entrepreneurship courses, with limited efforts to create interdisciplinary, systemic, and future-oriented teaching approaches. Utopia realizing aims to bridge this gap by training students in these essential skills.
Over the past decade, design thinking has been increasingly used in entrepreneurship education and in teaching with the live case method. Educators apply design thinking to guide students through key steps: understanding a problem in a live case, identifying opportunities, developing solutions, prototyping, and planning resource mobilization.
Originally a tool for designers to shape and refine artifacts, design thinking now helps entrepreneurs develop solutions to real-world challenges. Studies show that students using design thinking enhance their creativity and entrepreneurial mindset. These pedagogical principles informed the development of the utopia-realizing methodology. Students first define their utopia before engaging with a live case that presents an entrepreneurial decision. The live case method then helps them apply entrepreneurial action to address real-world challenges and move closer to their envisioned sustainable future.
How-To Guide
Phase 1: Unfold Utopia
This phase is characterized by discussion, storytelling, scenario-building, imagination, and decision-making take place.
Stage 1.1. is devoted to the utopia concept. The student defines the meaning of sustainability in the given context (i.e. a geographical location), which is then used as a basis for creating the utopia.
Students should discuss and agree on key aspects such as interaction with nature, living conditions, values, sustainability perspectives (e.g., deep vs. shallow ecology or strong vs. weak sustainability), and the economy of the geographical location. This stage encourages creativity, where unconventional ideas and alternative ways of living are welcomed, without concern for feasibility or implementation challenges. A utopian canvas with structured prompts can help guide this process, ensuring the envisioned utopia serves as a foundation for the next phase.
In Stage 1.2, students explore how a marine hub (i.e. the case context) can contribute to their utopian vision. For example, in a pilot exercise, students answered: What functions should the marine hub and its buildings serve in your envisioned future? This step focuses on designing the marine hub’s role in supporting a sustainable society.
Phase 2: Introduce the Case
In Phase 2, students are introduced to the narrative and owners of the live case, which ideally comes from the local industrial or public sector. They should have the opportunity to visit the case owners and engage directly with the case.
During our pilot, students met with both case owners and various stakeholders. We emphasized to the case owners that the focus should be on sharing resources and external conditions relevant to the marine hub, rather than their own ideas for its development. Since this methodology begins with utopia, we intentionally avoided centering discussions on the case owners’ problems.
After this introduction, students move forward by identifying opportunities within their utopian vision while assessing feasibility within the case’s real-world constraints.
Phase 3: Pursue Opportunities
Phase 3 focuses on taking action toward the utopia by identifying and pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities for the case owners. It consists of two stages:
3.1 Opportunity Identification
3.2 Concept Development. This phase incorporates the triple-layered business model canvas and prototyping to structure case activities.
In Stage 3.1, students identify opportunities within their utopian scenario. Opportunities are understood as new means–ends relationships, where the end is the envisioned utopia from Phase 1, and the means are the resources and networks of the case owners. The final opportunity represents a balance between the utopian vision and what is feasible given the available resources and external conditions.
Stage 3.2 focuses on concept development, where students refine their identified opportunity into a tangible concept. They define its functionalities, qualities, and values as inputs for prototyping. Prototyping makes ideas more visual and concrete, using readily available materials to quickly create models. Educators are encouraged to provide materials for student groups to facilitate this process.
By the end of Phase 3, students will have developed a concrete sustainability concept. Since implementing such concepts presents challenges, the utopia-realizing methodology includes an implementation stage, covered in Phase 4.
Phase 4: Engage for Sustainability
The final phase of the utopia-realizing method, Engage for Sustainability, consists of two stages: 4.1 Mobilizing and 4.2 Assessing Sustainability. These steps are essential for implementing a sustainability concept, as they involve resource allocation, stakeholder engagement, and sustainability impact assessment.
In Stage 4.1 (Mobilizing), students create two matrices: one mapping the resources required for the project and another identifying key stakeholders. These matrices help students develop a strategy for resource mobilization and stakeholder engagement. By the end of this stage, they will have formulated a concrete plan for allocating resources and securing stakeholder involvement.
In Stage 4.2 (Assessing Sustainability), students evaluate their concept against the utopian vision established in Phase 1. They determine which aspects contribute to sustainable development—particularly in relation to the UN Sustainable Development Goals—and identify any unsustainable elements.
By completing all stages of the utopia-realizing methodology, students will have developed and assessed a sustainable concept that aligns with both the live case and their envisioned utopia, ultimately contributing to the transition toward sustainability.
Discussion
The methodology was tested in the course Sustainability in Practice, where data was gathered to evaluate its impact through semi-structured interviews, observations, and student reflection notes. Sustainability in Practice is an interdisciplinary course at the bachelor level, where biology and business students collaborate in teams. All 12 participants were included in the study.
Students highlighted that the teaching methods and tools used in the course impacted their learning experience. For instance, working with the live case encouraged them to place greater importance on sustainability when approaching entrepreneurship, while also empowering them to take action towards realizing their sustainable vision.
One student shared, “It was exciting to design the marine hub. I believe it gives some extra kick when there is an actual customer” (student’s reflection note). This illustrates how a student-centered approach, such as a live case, can enhance learning by boosting motivation and making the process more meaningful.
Another student noted, “It gave me a sense of importance and showed me how crucial sustainability is and how much power I have to influence it” (student’s reflection note).
Another expressed, “It’s a pleasant way to learn a bit about how to actually take some action” (student interview). This underscores the importance of ownership, empowerment, and engagement in the learning process, leading to diverse outcomes.
The students reported an increase in their entrepreneurial mindset and skills, including creativity, handling uncertainty, and opportunity development, as well as a deeper understanding of sustainability competencies, such as systemic thinking, foresight, and collaboration.
The study shows that students developed a stronger entrepreneurial mindset, realizing their potential to be change agents for a more sustainable society.
One student explained, “I didn’t think I could actually do anything with any company or anyone to improve things, but now I see it’s actually possible” (student interview), while another reflected, “There are many small steps I can take to play my role in creating a sustainable society” (student’s reflection note).
Additionally, students reported an increase in creativity and their ability to deal with uncertainty. One student reflected on how the methodology fostered their creative skills while working with an uncertain situation:
“The course challenged our technical and creative skills, which felt a bit sudden, and there was much chaos and uncertainty as a result. The outcome, though, made everything seem worth it, and it definitely tied in with the central theme of using what we already have to create something of value.” (Student’s reflection note)
Systemic thinking, a core competency of sustainability, also grew among the students. One student described the shift in her understanding of sustainability: “I think I actually learned a lot, to think more broadly about how systems can be improved so that more people can live a more sustainable life, not just individuals” (student interview). Students also noted that working on their utopia enhanced their foresight thinking skills, although they found it challenging.
Moreover, the methodology emphasized the importance of discussion and decision-making, which students appreciated. One student highlighted the value of dialogue in teamwork:
“But, it’s a dialogue. And just realizing that you and a person can have different opinions on something. … And there are ways to get people to see things from your perspective by properly addressing them. And to be able to see something, and to turn it around in many ways to get the full scope of it rather than just like take it at face value.” (Student interview)
The group work also allowed students to recognize their own competencies and apply their knowledge. One student found it interesting to see how their acquired knowledge could be used: “It was interesting to use the knowledge I have gained through the years at university and see how the information intertwines” (student’s reflection note).
Finally, the case owner benefited from the relationship, gaining new perspectives and insights into the students’ sustainability solutions.
The pilot study suggests that the utopia-realizing methodology has the potential to develop key skills for sustainable entrepreneurship. Given that it was tested with both business and biology students, we believe the methodology is suitable for both business and non-business students.
However, the use of the utopia-realizing methodology does come with challenges. For some students, both the utopia method and the live case study were quite different from the teaching approaches they were accustomed to. This led to uncertainty, confusion, and even anxiety for some. As the activities in the methodology are open-ended and require multiple decisions from the students, mentoring and feedback from educators are crucial. Frequent mentoring for each activity, along with group and in-class reflections, can help address any challenges that arise during the four phases of the methodology.
Since the pilot was conducted with a small group of students, the methodology may require adjustments to be applied to larger classes in entrepreneurship education. For instance, if a large class faces limitations in visiting the case company, educators could introduce additional cases and divide students into smaller groups for visits. Alternatively, if visiting the company is not feasible, a digital presentation of the company could be used in class.
Implications for Case Teaching Practice and Reframing the Case Method for Entrepreneurship Education
This material presented here has illustrated that the novel teaching methodology utopia realizing increases students’ entrepreneurial skills and mindset while they learn to think in systems. The utopia-realizing methodology reframes parts of the live case method by introducing a novel order of case activities and engaging the students in defining a sustainable, desired future (i.e. utopia) before they are presented with the live case narrative. While existing methodologies teaching sustainable entrepreneurship most commonly present the narrative of the live case early in the learning process, utopia realizing seems to improve the foresight, systems thinking, and normative skills of the students, since they do not limit their solutions for a better future to problems. The students found that starting by creating a utopia broadened the set of identified opportunities. Even though authenticity is often highlighted as important in entrepreneurship education (Aadland & Aaboen, 2020), the reality can limit the opportunities and sustainability the students can envision from an early stage. Thus, when working with sustainable entrepreneurship, it is advisable not to introduce the real world too early as it can limit the sustainable opportunities the students can grasp.
Throughout the education system, students are well trained in understanding what needs to be done to get a good grade and are seldom challenged with what they want the world to look like. By working on a utopia, the hidden assumptions, norms, and values of the students are brought forward. When working in groups, the students have to agree on their utopia—a utopia all team members feel comfortable with and that could reflect their own perceptions of a sustainable society. Hence, we suggest that a case need not include challenges or issues but can be formed around a self-defined ideal situation, such as the sustainable future, which requires entrepreneurial action to make utopia real.
Based on
REFRAMING THE CASE METHOD IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION,
Karin Wigger, Lise Aaboen, Dag Haneberg, Siri Jakobsen, and Thomas Lauvås –
9781800881150
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via Open Access. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Chapter 9: From Utopia to sustainable entrepreneurship: a novel case methodology
References
Aadland, T. and Aaboen, L. (2020) ‘An entrepreneurship education taxonomy based on authenticity’. European Journal of Engineering Education, 45 (5), pp. 711–728.
Levitas, R. (2013) Utopia as method: The imaginary reconstitution of society. Springer.