Abstract:

Courses that bring the community and its needs into academe provide increasingly creative opportunities for industry leaders to become change agents, and to form long-term relationships with developing businesses and markets. Such partnerships have residual and mutual benefits for industry, academicians and students, as all parties have a hand in determining and shaping the culture of tomorrow’s workplaces. For industry, the gains are profitability, a dedicated workforce, and a futuristic vision, while for the students, the gain is learning to develop, grow and model businesses that embody those tenets, and for both, a “wide-angle lenses” perspective, a collaborative problem-solving network, and adaptive long-term worldview.

We present a chronology of academe/industry partnerships focused on philanthropic collaborations and entrepreneurial principles, concepts, and theories in this paper. In addition to providing insight into futuristic workplaces, we sought to leverage students with skills and tools to organize, create, and manage socially responsible workplaces that embrace divergent backgrounds, points-of-view, and disabilities, particularly in the workplaces that they will either create as entrepreneurs, or that they will help guide as influencers and leaders. Our goals in the activities that we share were threefold: to combine learning with meaningful, cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary initiatives to address globally-shared concerns; to contribute to positive social change; and to help develop a sense of collaborative workplace culture.

Keywords:

Situated Learning, Citizen Leadership, Creative Problem-Solving, Cultural Dimensions, Workplace Culture, Community of Practice, Community Partnerships.