MYP Individuals & Societies • Archived MYP unit
Business School
An economics and entrepreneurship enquiry into how scarce resources are allocated, how business choices affect stakeholders, and how innovation can create value within environmental and cultural limits.
Resources, choice, systems and sustainability
Original AdornGeo sequence
Unit learning
An Introduction to Economics
Resources, Scarcity & Choice
Resources & Economic Systems
Factors of Production
Choices & Consequences
Business Stakeholders
Sustainability, Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship, Environment & Culture
Sand — resource scarcity and conflict case study
1. An Introduction to Economics
Start with the central economic problem: people have many wants, but time, money, labour and natural resources are limited. Economics studies how individuals, businesses and governments make choices about allocating those scarce resources, and who gains or loses from the decisions.
Crash Course Economics — Introduction to Economics
2. Resources, Scarcity and Choice
Use the recovered economic-problem activity to distinguish needs from wants and renewable from non-renewable resources. Every choice has an opportunity cost: the value of the best alternative that is given up. Students should make this cost explicit rather than treating it as simply the money spent.
Economics Explained — Scarcity and opportunity cost
3. Resources and Economic Systems
Compare how traditional, market, command and mixed systems answer three questions: what should be produced, how should it be produced, and who receives the output? Avoid labelling countries as pure examples; real economies combine institutions and change over time.
Market, command and mixed economies
4. Factors of Production
Businesses combine land, labour, capital and enterprise to produce goods and services. Apply the categories geographically: land includes natural resources, labour varies in skills and conditions, capital includes produced assets and infrastructure, while enterprise coordinates resources and carries risk.
Economics Explained — Factors of production
5. Choices and Consequences
Economic choices create intended benefits, opportunity costs and externalities. Follow a decision from producer to consumer and then outward to workers, communities and ecosystems. Judge it using short- and long-term effects rather than price alone.
6. Business Stakeholders
A stakeholder can affect a business or be affected by it. Identify owners, employees, customers, suppliers, government, local communities and the environment, then map their interest, influence and exposure to risk. Conflict is expected because stakeholders value different outcomes.
What is a stakeholder?
Stakeholders and stakeholder mapping
7. Sustainability, Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship is more than starting a company: it identifies a need, combines resources and tests a response under uncertainty. Innovation can reduce material use and waste, but students must distinguish a redesigned system from a product that only sounds greener.
Ellen MacArthur Foundation — The basics of a circular economy
Products as services — a circular business model
8. Entrepreneurship, Environment and Culture
A business model is embedded in place. Culture shapes needs, trust and acceptable practices; environmental limits shape inputs and waste; regulation and infrastructure shape what is possible. Adapt an enterprise idea to Bangkok rather than assuming a model can simply be copied from elsewhere.
9. Sand: A Scarcity and Conflict Case Study
Sand is the world's most extracted solid material and a vital input to concrete, glass, roads and land reclamation. Yet the sand suitable for construction is unevenly distributed, extraction damages rivers and coasts, and profits and costs fall on different stakeholders. Use the original AdornGeo case study to connect scarcity, production, externalities, governance and innovation.
Why the UN says the world faces a sand crisis
Singapore's sand problem