#  Sustaining Impact Over Time 

 





 Semester:   Spring 

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 Year offered:  2025 

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 Link: [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/gse-218835/2025/spring2/16144) 

 

 

 

 What’s necessary for an innovation to have impact at scale in the world? Creating the innovation may be the easiest part. Potential users – those the innovation is designed to impact – must find it, try it, stick with it, and implement it with sufficient fidelity to produce the promised results. In T523M students will receive personalized mentorship in developing and vetting a plan to operationalize and fund the necessary resources to sustain scalable impact over time for their existing projects or products. Students will use a tool we call the Impact Sustainability Canvas to capture, vet, and revise assumptions and plans. The Canvas keeps impact in the center, with potential business models in service of achieving that impact. Sustainability may come from a successful new business or product, or it may emerge from partnerships with perceived competitors, funding from foundations with shared values, or someplace unexpected. Developing a model for impact sustainability is an iterative process requiring testing and interviews with different members of the Impact Ecosystem in which the innovation must thrive. Case studies, peer feedback, and expert mentoring support students through the process.  
*Logistics: Enrollment is limited to 25 students who have completed either T522 or T522M. In addition to class meetings, students are required to attend 30-minute weekly one-on-one mentoring sessions (which may be online or in-person) with a member of the teaching team.*