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Discover climate course materials and resources.
Search the shared repository of simulations, case descriptions and course syllabi to enhance your own climate-related teaching.
- Course
15.270/“Ethical Practice: Leading Through Professionalism, Social Responsibility, and System Design” introduces seminar participants to aspects of ethics in business, with a focus on general management. Over 12 sessions, students explore both the philosophy driving business ethics and the daily challenges that managers face; they also engage on the subject with guest faculty and business and other professional practitioners. Individual sessions take the form of moderated discussion, with occasional short lectures from the instructor.
“Ethical Practice” walks participants through three ever-wider circles of ethical complexity: 1) individual, professional commitments; 2) the rights and responsibilities of corporations; and 3) the social, ethical underpinnings of business as an activity. We seek to define terms central to each of these circles, culminating in a brief historical assessment of business and capital today.
- Topics on: Climate Justice, Climate Policy, Climate Sustainability, Corporate Sustainability Strategy
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Integrative experience that explores the complex set of circumstances and choices leaders must face in light of uncertain environmental and social consequences. Drawing on academic and practical experiences, students engage in a semester-long project focused on a host organization’s sustainability challenge.
Peer-to-peer learning accompanies in-class cases, simulations, and role-playing to provide students with practical skills for application in projects and for careers beyond. A shared deep dive into a systemic challenge provides a chance for students across programs to reflect and engage in dialogue about the ethical landscape of business. Through personal reflection and career visioning, students clarify their own personal commitments to leadership and change.
- Topics on: Behavioral Economics, Climate Finance, Climate Tech, Renewable Energy, Social Impact and Sustainability
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This advanced climate change seminar will explore pathways to a low-greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions future with an emphasis on the policy frameworks required to establish a just transition to a clean energy economy — as well as the business, industry, and societal transformations that will be needed to respond successfully to climate change. Each session will introduce students to critical topics including: theories of change, climate change policy frameworks (at the global, national, state/provincial, and local levels), technology challenges and opportunities, incentives to spur innovation, finance strategies for nations in both the Global North and Global South, the role of private capital and sustainability-minded investors, climate justice and equity considerations, and potential points of policy leverage to drive transformative change. Students will be asked to think critically about the obstacles to deep decarbonization and the trade-offs across social objectives that might complicate the mobilization of society in response to the climate change challenge.
- Topics on: Climate Sustainability, Decarbonization, Energy
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Global challenges such as urbanization, food security, water crises, inequality, natural resource degradation, and climate change increasingly present material risks to corporations. Yet these same trends can create profitable opportunities for companies if innovation is harnessed to create products and business models that provide solutions for growing global markets.
In the course, we will examine how businesses assess their risks and opportunities, and how they develop strategies to promote more sustainable practices. (Formerly called “Sustainable Business Strategy”)
- Topics on: Climate Justice, Climate Sustainability, Corporate Sustainability Strategy
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“Sustainability” is a widely used and sometimes abused term by companies and entrepreneurs. In the business context, sustainability means not only “doing the same things better” but also “doing different things” and “doing them together with others”. While many companies have developed sustainability programs, improving operational efficiency, reducing carbon emissions, and minimizing waste, we are witnessing the implementation of non-systemic actions that do not contribute to developing a true sustainable strategy. For a company to be sustainable, it must effectively manage the competitive and seemingly divergent interests of all stakeholders: investors, employees, customers, governments, local communities, and the natural environment.
The goal of this course is to initiate a debate around the role and functioning of businesses in the face of the challenges and the opportunities provided by sustainability. Specifically, the course will first analyze the connections between sustainability and innovation as a means to translate sustainability strategies into improved financial performance. Additionally, the course will address the topic of measuring sustainability within different organizations.
- Topics on: Climate Justice, Climate Policy, Climate Sustainability, Social Impact and Sustainability
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The topic of corporate sustainability remains controversial. Some argue that sustainability is a property of whole systems, such as an ecosystem or the Earth as a whole, not of individual organizations. What, if anything, does it mean to say that a company is sustainable? Academic research on the topic of corporations and sustainability has seen rapid growth since the first Rio Earth Summit. This course will explore that body of knowledge, placing it within the larger context of environmental economics, and the economics of sustainability more broadly. The goals of the course are three-fold: (1) To give students a solid foundation in the economics of the environment and sustainability; (2) to apply economic fundamentals to crucial sustainability issues of climate change and energy policy; and (3) to examine critically the business case for sustainability, and the place of sustainability within corporate strategy.
- Topics on: Climate Finance, Climate Sustainability
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Firms today face increasing pressure from activists, investors, and customers, to reduce the environmental impacts of their operations and supply chains as well as uphold basic human rights and labor standards for the people who produce the materials / components / products. At the same time, using a sustainability lens to look at its operations and supply chain, a firm can identify new opportunities for improving efficiency and innovations. Further sustainability (environmental / social) as an artifact has to combined with a discussion of responsibility. That is, how is responsibility (for ensuring sustainability) apportioned across the extended value chain that includes the end consumers? This course examines how to design and manage environmentally and socially responsible operations and supply chains.
- Topics on: Climate Sustainability, Operations
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MBA course syllabus covering energy finance and related renewable energy and green finance.
- Topics on: Energy
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Many organizations are now (finally!) attempting to incorporate environmental sustainability initiatives into their strategic planning and day-to-day operations. The success or failure of these initiatives often rests on the ability of leaders to implement and manage the change process. This course will focus on the organizational change process, with particular focus on creating and managing transformational change around sustainability initiatives.
Note: Course taught at Baruch College, City University of New York
- Topics on: Environmental Leadership
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Many of us at MIT share a dream to “do well by doing good” – to apply our talents in ways that solve important world problems while generating enough revenue to grow a healthy business. The real world exhibits varying degrees of this phenomenon. We hope all MIT graduates joining the private sector plan to help their enterprises operate with integrity and care for all stakeholders, in order to mitigate any harmful negative externalities.
But it is rarer to successfully innovate for impact, that is, develop products and services that actively improve the world as they grow. It turns out that growth, profit, and positive impact are in constant tension with one another, as are different dimensions of impact. Breaking these tradeoffs is possible but extraordinarily challenging.
- Topics on: Climate Finance, Climate Policy, Climate Sustainability, Decision, Risk, and Operations, Social Impact and Sustainability
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This class teaches modern tools and methods for product design and development. The cornerstone is a project in which teams of management, engineering, and industrial design students conceive, design, and prototype a new product or service. The class is primarily intended for Sloan MBA students (particularly the Entrepreneurship and Innovation track and the Leaders for Global Operations program) and for MIT engineering graduate students (particularly mechanical engineering and manufacturing master’s programs). The course is jointly taught with Rhode Island School of Design for industrial design students as a senior studio.
- Topics on: Climate Finance, Climate Sustainability, Renewable Energy, Social Impact and Sustainability
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Understanding the behavior of consumers – what choices people will make in a given situation and how those choices can be influenced – is central to marketing, as well as a wide range of other areas including innovation, entrepreneurship, management, and strategy. Furthermore, we are all consumers ourselves, and thus understanding the behavior of consumers helps us to understand – and improve – our own decision-making. In this course, we will explore insights into consumer behavior generated by behavioral economics, cognitive science, and social psychology, and how to translate these insights into action in “real world” settings
- Topics on: Behavioral Economics, Climate Sustainability, Corporate Sustainability Strategy, Social Impact and Sustainability
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The purpose of this course is to help you think critically and move productively toward business strategies for a sustainable future. It is essential preparation for corporate sustainability leadership – in line/executive management, sustainability staff, or professional services and technology/tool development to enable corporate action. The course also supports aspiring regulators, advocates, and investors in understanding the firm-level perspective on sustainability. Business Strategies for a Sustainable Future (BSSF) has four learning goals that correspond to the PROMISE framework above, going from macro to micro. The backbone is a robust four-lens understanding of materiality. We explore the pressing environmental and societal issues facing business and society, their systemic causes, and ground you in a science-based lens on materiality and corporate sustainability. Key concepts: planetary boundaries, human rights and social foundations, limits to growth, race to the bottom, climate physical risk, life cycle impact and greenhouse gas accounting, context-based goal setting. Students learn how institutions (e.g. government policy) and markets (e.g. customers, investors, prospective employees) bring these issues to the doorstep of organizations – a stakeholder influence lens. Key concepts: collective action; governing the commons; single, double, and dynamic materiality; ESG data and aggregate confusion; stakeholder analysis; climate transition risk.
Students learn to assess strategies and solutions that aim to create value for organizations and society – the business value lens. We showcase the cutting edge of practice and where there is further opportunity for innovation.
Key concepts: enterprise carbon management; circular economy; servicizing; integrated design process; sustainability-oriented innovation; high performance work systems.
• Students clarify their personal purpose and sharpen relational skills to be an effective agent of change for sustainability. This is the basis of a purpose-based lens on materiality and corporate sustainability. Key concepts: sustainable leadership capabilities; authentic conversation; making/translating the business case.
- Topics on: Climate Justice, Climate Policy, Climate Sustainability, Corporate Sustainability Strategy, Social Impact and Sustainability
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The +Impact Studio teaches interdisciplinary student teams (e.g., MBAs, MSWs, MPH, MEng) how to use scholarly intellectual capital, business acumen and design methodologies to begin to address a wicked problem. Wicked problems are issues with societal import, that are difficult to understand, and are embedded within complex systems; for example, how might the financially precarious or the unbanked accomplish necessary financial transactions in society; how might citizens living with failing infrastructure be better served by municipality; how might we build enterprises that uplift rather than deplete their communities?
To begin to address such an issue, teams will be seeded with novel, university-generated intellectual capital (e.g., new insights on FinTech or a machine learning algorithm from Marketing research) that may provide a critical piece of the puzzle to making a sustainable, scalable positive impact. There is a trove of such capital within the University that would otherwise remain disconnected from the pressing problems of our generation. Thus, this course serves as a nexus between this intellectual capital, a wicked problem and design.
- Topics on: Climate Policy, Social Impact and Sustainability
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How to define and deal with social impact and responsibility of the key stakeholders, including corporations; investors; international financial institutions, such as the World Bank; United Nations; foundations; donors; non-government organizations; and development agencies? How to deal with the increased complexity and the dynamic of change of the external ecosystem? What role can business, through its core activities, innovations, and innovative partnerships, play in meeting local and global societal needs in protecting the environment, improving health, education and governance, empowering communities, eradicating poverty, etc.?
Are these needs properly captured by environmental, social, and governance (ESG) priorities and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? What is the relationship between the SDGs and ESG? How to enhance environmental, social, and governance impact through leadership, social intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship, and disruptive social innovations? What are the challenges of measurement and reporting impact? Can technology help solve ESG related problems? Does business have a responsibility to help address these priorities? Are there limits to what can and should be done through business and innovative partnerships? What are successful examples of business and innovative partnerships approaches to meeting these needs and priorities? What is the role of GEN-Z?
- Topics on: Corporate Sustainability Strategy, Social Impact and Sustainability
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Private and public sector firms increasingly use marketing strategies to engage their customers and stakeholders around social impact. To do so, managers need to understand how best to engage and influence customers to behave in ways that have positive social effects. This course consists of three distinct but connected parts. The first part of the course focuses on social marketing strategies for changing the behavior of a target segment of consumers on key issues in the public interest. The second part explores these initiatives within the context of specific issues (e.g., environmental sustainability, health behaviors, financial decisions, etc.).
The third part of the course examines the growing role of corporate social initiatives as they relate to marketing. For the first time, this course is being offered as an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course supported by the Netter Center for Community Partnerships. The purpose of this program is to offer more practical, collaborative problem-solving experiences as part of the learning experience. As described below, the final group project for this course will be carried out in partnership with local organizations affiliated with the Netter Center.
- Topics on: Social Impact and Sustainability, Sustainable Marketing
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Students develop a basic understanding of the dynamic interdependencies in food systems and how they are inherently intertwined with critical issues of climate, health and social justice. Class brings in multiple climate oriented speakers.
- Topics on: Climate Justice, Climate Sustainability, Social Impact and Sustainability
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Graduate students who develop and apply their business, engineering, scientific, legal, and policy knowledge to optimize market opportunities for cutting-edge climate change solutions to climate tech startups.
- Topics on: Climate Tech, Corporate Sustainability Strategy, Social Impact and Sustainability
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This course is intended for people interested in working in impact sectors (climate, food, energy, environment, health, education, affordable housing, racial justice, etc.) Deep dive into asset classes and issues areas including racial justice and/or climate change.
- Topics on: Climate Finance, Climate Sustainability, Social Impact and Sustainability
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Students will work in teams of four to six, with a mix of backgrounds and areas of study. They will be assigned three technologies/business ideas. In the first half of the course, teams will be asked to evaluate the business ideas as the basis for a new venture. At the course midpoint, they will present their conclusions and choose one project to take forward into the second half of the course. In this portion, they will develop a strategy for a new venture to commercialize or pursue the idea they have chosen.
They will perform an analysis and choose the target customer, develop a business model, create an approach to developing the venture with a view to sustainability, and develop a roadmap for execution in the short term (likely a two year horizon but this is dependent on the nature of the venture and opportunity). The strategy shall be sufficient to serve as a foundation for a first operating plan for the company. Each team will be assigned projects that fall in the categories of: energy transformation, climate resilience, climate & data, and carbon sequestration.
- Topics on: Climate Tech, Corporate Sustainability Strategy, Social Impact and Sustainability