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Purpose Conceptualisation is a primary aspect of any business development. As social enterprises strive to bridge the gap between social mission and financial sustainability, the conceptualisation process requires a careful understanding and analysis of social realities. The conceptualisation process begins with identifying social problems, conducting a detailed analysis of social problems, identifying market gaps, and formulating a plan to address these issues. This study examines the effectiveness of a field-focused, problem-based learning (PBL) approach in strengthening social enterprise conceptualisation among postgraduate students. Design/methodology/approach As the focus of the study is on exploratory and developmental pedagogical outcomes rather than causal generalisation, the study used a quasi-experimental single-group pre-post design. It was conducted with 32 students enrolled in a master's programme in Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship at an Indian university. The pedagogical intervention combined classroom instruction with five structured field visits guided by the design thinking framework. A validated 37-item instrument measuring knowledge, skills, and attitude related to social enterprise conceptualisation was administered before and after the intervention. To test the normality of data, the Shapiro-Wilk test was conducted. As the post-intervention data set does not meet the normality criteria, the non-parametric statistics (Wilcoxon signed-rank test) were used to analyse the data. Findings Findings reveal statistically significant improvements across all three dimensions, with post-intervention scores indicating substantial gains in knowledge, skills, and attitude. These results indicate that field-based PBL is positively associated with students' ability to conceptualise social enterprises grounded in real-world social problems. Research limitations/implications The study contributes to the social entrepreneurship education literature by empirically validating an integrated pedagogical approach that foregrounds conceptualisation through experiential, community-engaged learning, offering practical insights for social entrepreneurship curriculum design. The study suggests that structured field immersion may be particularly valuable for problem identification training. Originality/value The present study is tests structured intervention, designed using a blended approach (classroom and field) in the Indian context. The originality of the study lies in its incremental contribution to the teaching pedagogy of social enterprise.
Swain et al. (Sat,) studied this question.