Course Description
This experiential course prepares technical, business-minded, and policy-oriented students to build
and plan the implementation of a product, startup, or policy innovation from scratch. Students can
expect to work in an interdisciplinary team to develop novel products and solutions to address
existing problems in the realm of democracy and technology. For example, engineering students
may leverage technical skills to help translate ideas into products, while political science students
may leverage their policy knowledge and social science skills to identify problem areas and
generate plausible solutions. More generally, students from any discipline may bring unique
perspectives, domain expertise, and comparative advantages to their team. This cross-listed
course utilizes the Challenge Lab entrepreneurial course foundation, offered by the College of
Engineering Sutardja Center of Entrepreneurship and Technology, in partnership with the Political
Science department’s domain knowledge expertise to “Building Bridges between Democracy and
Technology for a Better Society”.
People and organizations have been grappling with unceasing advancements in digital
technologies and their possible implications for society, both good and bad. On the one hand,
technology and data can be used in beneficial and novel ways to bolster democratic functions and
the empowerment of communities within a society. (As one example, dashboards and products
that make political data more easily accessible and interpretable to the general public.) On the
other hand, there also exist risks of technological misuse and encroachment into democratic
values and governance. (As one example, the proliferation of disinformation.) In this Challenge
Lab, students will explore the design of policies, businesses, and/or products that can help provide
such benefits and/or mitigate such risks.
The ubiquity of technology’s influence offers opportunities for innovation in many different areas,
and this course explores these opportunities.
About Challenge Labs
Challenge Labs are 4 unit courses for students of all academic backgrounds who seek a rigorous, interactive, team-based, and hands-on learning experience in entrepreneurship and technology. These courses use a unique pedagogy, The Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship, that involves the use of games, industry guest speakers, team exercises, videos and labs to cover the early part of the startup lifecycle. In these highly experiential courses, students form start-up teams to create technology solutions or services to address a broadly-defined problem posed by an industry partner or social challenge.
Instructor
Gert Christen