Center for Global Management

MBA STUDENT CONTRIBUTES TO DEVELOPMENT OF RESEARCH AND POTENTIAL NEW MBA OFFERINGS ON GLOBAL SOCIAL INNOVATION IN HEALTH (2020-21)

Gayle Northrop

Adjunct assistant professor and senior faculty advisor, Impact@Anderson

The terms “social innovation,” “social impact,” “social entrepreneurship” and “social change” are often used interchangeably, in both academic and non-academic settings, despite having very different interpretations and meanings. The same applies to the terms “disruptive innovation,” “catalytic innovation” and “inclusive innovation.” All of these terms take on distinct meanings when applied to different sectors, such as education, finance, health and community development. Social innovation in health systems is growing in importance, particularly in light of COVID-19, including the ways in which health care is delivered and the role of disruptive, catalytic and inclusive innovation in that process.

During 2020-21, the CGM funded Gayle Northrop, adjunct assistant professor and senior faculty advisor of Impact@Anderson, who teaches the center’s South Africa–focused social innovation and social entrepreneurship global immersion course, to explore distinctions between these concepts; how they are understood and applied differently in relation to health and health systems, particularly in the global south; how they are incorporated into management curricula; and, in particular, how social innovation in health is taught in academic settings globally and how it is introduced to professionals and practitioners around the world. Northrop, who is also adjunct faculty at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business (GSB) and an advisor to the GSB’s Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship, has been collaborating with Bertha Centre colleagues on the Health Systems Innovation team. CGM funding supported a landscape analysis of global, social, inclusive innovation in health, particularly focusing on the teaching of global health innovation frameworks and principles, including the use of timely, relevant case studies.
 

Eleanor Huntington, from the FEMBA Class of 2022, is serving as a research assistant collaborating with Northrop. She has been studying existing social innovation in health curricular offerings worldwide, identifying key concepts to cover in existing and new global social innovations in health offerings as well as researching opportunities to introduce such offerings at UCLA Anderson and UCLA more broadly. Her research will result in identification of specific modules and case studies to be incorporated into an outline for a new two- or four-unit MBA-level course, workshop or series of sessions addressing the topic of global social innovation in health.

In 2019-20, the CGM funded Northrop to develop two global systems change case studies to use in courses on social innovation and systems change, further augmenting Anderson’s social impact curriculum.