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
This mini-case is a follow-up to the BP and the Whiting Refinery Case (A), which describes the situation facing BP America’s President Bob Malone in late 2007, while attempting to expand the refining capacity at their Whiting,…
- Topics on: Impact, Investing, Policy, Strategy, Technology
- Case Description
Awarded 3rd prize in the 2008 oikos Casewriting Competition. Steve Glenn, a successful Internet start-up entrepreneur, returned to his love of architecture and commitment to sustainability by creating a company that would…
- Topics on: Impact, Investing, Statistics, Strategy, Technology
- Case Description
In 2018, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink wrote a surprising letter to CEOs across the country stating “to prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive…
- Topics on: Impact, Investing, Statistics, Strategy, Technology
- Case Description
Tony’s Chocolonely is a Dutch chocolate company that prides itself on using slave-free labor within its supply chain. However, after it was revealed that the company’s major supplier, Barry Callebaut, used child and slave labor…
- Topics on: Impact, Statistics, Strategy, Technology
- Case Description
In a little over a year, more than 6,500 workers at over 250 corporate-owned Starbucks stores had voted to unionize with Workers United. The former CEO, Kevin Johnson, retired unexpectedly in April 2022 after weeks of…
- Topics on: Impact, Investing, Policy, Statistics, Strategy, Technology
- Case Description
Patagonia has long been a revered company in the world of outdoor gear, and environmental and social sustainability. Known for pushing the bounds of what it means to be a mission-driven organization, the company has…
- Topics on: Impact, Investing, Statistics, Strategy, Technology
- Case Description
This case is set in August 2021, eight years after the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh, which remains the deadliest fashion-garment incident to date. The case’s central issue: What is the most effective way for the major…
- Topics on: Impact, Statistics, Strategy, Technology
- Case Description
Highlighting the successful implementation of a sustainable large-scale residential development that defied powerful Hurricane Ian, this case focuses on Sydney Kitson and his sustainable real estate development company…
- Topics on: Impact, Investing, Statistics, Strategy, Technology
- Case Description
Why is the consumer goods group backpedalling on responsible-business targets? Explore the issues with this ‘instant case study’
- Topics on: ESG, Impact
- Case Description
The distance put between investment funds and workers in companies they back raises questions over responsibility. Probe the arguments with this ‘instant teaching case study’
- Topics on: Impact, Investing
- 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