This specialization is for anyone who would like to improve how their company or organization impacts the environment, people and communities. We will introduce you to some of the key concepts and tools of sustainable business, then teach you how to be an effective change agent. By the end of the specialization you will have the skills to create an effective sustainability proposal and know who you have to convince, and what they need to be convinced.

The Classes
Class 1: First Steps in Making the Business Case for Sustainability
Identifying a good first project, writing an effective proposal, financial analysis & sustainable thinking.
Class 2: More on Change and Sustainability
Implementing change, green design, sustainability reporting, examples from practitioners/
Class 3: Sustainable Business: Big Issues, Big Changes
Climate change, carbon footprinting, Context-based sustainability and science-based targets, water and energy, workplace sustainability issues, and supply chain impacts.
Class 4: Comprehensive Case
The capstone class haps you put all the pieces together as you produce a complete proposal for change! This proposal can be based on a case we have written or for your organization, or both.

Applied Learning Project
Class 1: A financial analysis (week 3) and a B-Corp Survey (week 5).
Class 2: Identifying appropriate sustainability metrics and an option (Honors) life-cycle analysis.
Class 3: Setting a Science-Based Sustainability Target.
Class 4: Option 1: Write a proposal for changes at Snowflake Basin Ski Resort, a hypothetical ski area.
Option 2: Write a proposal for a change at your organization
Option 3: Do both 1 and 2.

Do you want to contribute to a more sustainable society? Tackle the challenges in the transition towards a circular economy? In this course you will analyse what it takes to create a circular economy including sustainable supply chains.

The transition towards a circular economy is one of the biggest challenges in order to create a more sustainable society. This transition requires circular thinking and an interdisciplinary approach, combining socio-technical, managerial, and environmental considerations.

Right now we design products from cradle to grave: from production to consumption to waste, which is a linear model. But we should design products from cradle to cradle: in a closed loop whereby they don’t become waste, but valuable resources again. And when we start thinking in circles, we might as well try to reinvent not just supply chains, but entire systems. Because that’s what we have been doing with sustainability: we have been departing from the status quo, while cradle to cradle and circular pushes us to think outside the box.

Cradle to Cradle celebrates abundance; it recognizes that people, just like ants and trees, are abundant and have a large impact on their environment. The challenge is to make this impact a positive one and we invite you to join this challenge!

In this course, we therefore take a systems approach to the circular economy, considering different stakeholder perspectives, their incentive structures, and their impact on circular alternatives.
The circular solutions will be assessed by using applied, as well as emerging, technologies. You will learn how to use life cycle assessment and agent-based modelling to assess the socio-technical and manageable challenges and environmental benefits of alternative solutions.

Land degradation is a widespread problem across the globe with serious consequences for the environment and all of society. Worsening land degradation caused by human activities is undermining the well-being of two-fifths of humanity, driving species extinctions and intensifying climate change. But there’s a huge potential for restoring landscapes: around two billion hectares of land, about two times the size of China, can be restored.

In this MOOC we focus on the potential of business model innovation for the challenge of large-scale landscape restoration. We take a partnership approach and make a bridge between ecology and economy. Learners get to design their own innovative business model for landscape restoration with 4 returns: return of natural capital, return of social capital, return of inspiration and return of financial capital. You move from ideation towards successful implementation. Each step is illustrated with three real-life cases of landscape restoration in Spain, Iceland and Portugal.