Explore Materials
Discover climate course materials and resources.
Search the shared repository of simulations, case descriptions and course syllabi to enhance your own climate-related teaching.
- Case Description
How did Sun Edison’s business model, emulated by an entire industry, prove unsuccessful for the organization that originated it?
- Topics on: Circular Economy, Economics, Finance, Impact, Strategy
- Case Description
What should the expansion strategy be for Guatemala-based Kingo, a provider of off-grid renewable energy?
- Topics on: Circular Economy, Impact
- Case Description
What path should the non-profit organization myAgro take to ensure its continued growth in support of African smallholder farmers?
- Topics on: Circular Economy, Impact
- Case Description
Can Tesla replicate its success in the United States to become a global leader in the rapidly growing electric vehicle market?
- Topics on: Circular Economy, Economics, Finance, Impact, Strategy
- Case Description
Should M&G stick with the original plan to simply act as a licensor or take a more active role in the biofuel marketplace?
- Topics on: Circular Economy, Economics, Finance, Impact
- Case Description
- Topics on: Circular Economy, Statistics, Technology
- Case Description
- Topics on: Circular Economy, Investing, Strategy, Technology
- Course
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: Economics, Impact, Strategy
- Course
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: Impact, Justice, Policy, Strategy
- Course
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: Impact, Policy
- Course
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: Impact, Strategy
- Course
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: Impact, Marketing
- Course
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: Impact, Justice
- Course
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: Impact, Strategy, Technology
- Course
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: Finance, Impact
- Course
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: Impact, Strategy, Technology
- Resource
This is the workbook that accompanies my book Sustainability Simplified, releasing late October 2024.
It teaches the Spodek Method experientially. The Spodek Method is a leadership technique that leads people through intrinsic motivation, not extrinsic. It avoids convincing, cajoling, coercing, and otherwise relying on extrinsic motivation, which may get compliance but tends to reinforce beliefs driving the behavior we want to change.
It leads to changing culture.
- Topics on: Decarbonization, ESG, Impact, Justice, Strategy, Technology
- Case Description
How should East Light Partners, an early mover in New York State’s growing clean energy market, calculate the financial feasibility of a proposed community solar project situated in Hudson, New York?
- Topics on: Economics, Finance, Impact
- Case Description
Interface has been a leading innovator in the carpet industry, specializing in the manufacturing of carpet tiles for commercial flooring. This case describes the history, context, and technology behind the company’s development of its newest sustainable innovation—carbon negative carpet tiles.
- Topics on: Impact
- Case Description
This case outlines various investment options for the CEO of JUST, Inc., Josh Tetrick, as he attempts to capture market share in the protein industry of the future.
- Topics on: Impact, Strategy