Field Study Seminar: Building Green Businesses

Course Number 6611

Professor Lee Fleming
Professor Rebecca Henderson
Professor of Mgt Practice Joseph Lassiter
Professor Forest Reinhardt
Winter, 10 Sessions; Paper and presentation
Field Study Seminar earning 3 non-classroom credits
Enrollment: Limited to 55

CAREER FOCUS

This field study seminar is designed for students who have a specific interest where environmental & energy impacts, consumer & social attitudes and political & regulatory processes are dominant forces providing the opportunity for the creation of new businesses, the scaling of embryonic businesses, or the re-design of established businesses. The output of the seminar will be a final report and a presentation. This course fits particularly well when students intending to enter the HBS, Harvard and /or MIT Business Plan contests.

In order to have a productive experience in this course, students (individually, or with their team) must enter the course with a specific project that they wish to explore. While projects may well change substantially over the course of the term, this course is not an appropriate vehicle for "coming up with a project idea during the course of the term". Students will be expected to recruit a "real world" project mentor/sponsor (such as a business practitioner, a researcher/product developer, a venture/private equity investor, and/ or a public policy maker) with proven domain expertise who, in addition to the instructors, will advise and evaluate the team's project.

EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES

This course will be field-based. Students will be expected to identify, contact, and interact with practitioners, researchers, venture/private equity investors, and public policy makers to address an important question or set of questions related to the project that they have identified. Each student, either individually or as a team, will frame a set of questions relevant to the project, gather and analyze data appropriate to address those questions, draw conclusions, and prepare both a written and oral presentation of their assessment based on the findings.

Given that students should begin the course with a specific project in mind, all students who wish to enroll in the seminar should email a 4-PowerPoint project description to Professor Joe Lassiter (jlassiter@hbs.edu) by 5 pm Monday, February 1, 2010. Each team will deliver their presentation to the class during the February 2 class session. (The questions to be answered and an example format are available from the BGB Course Platform for January 26).

All students are encouraged to work in teams of 2-4. In addition to the pre-enrollment project description, all cross-registrant students are required to team with at least one 2nd-year student from HBS or MIT-Sloan, unless that requirement is waived by the instructors.

COURSE CONTENT AND ORGANIZATION

This seminar will include 10 classroom sessions held across the Winter Term. Two classroom sessions will cover project planning and execution. Six classroom sessions will be lectures by outside speakers recruited by students/student organizations or case discussions lead by the instructors, both with associated preparatory readings, addressing important issues surrounding the building of green businesses. The final two sessions will be used for student presentations to the class concerning their findings. ,/p>

Deliverables will include the initial project description and timeline as well as a final report consisting of a concise 20-page written paper/presentation, your sponsor/mentor's evaluation, each team member's individual self-evaluation, and an oral presentation representing some 70 hours of work from each student project team member. Students will also be required to attend several smaller group sessions over the term in which they will present and discuss their project's progress with the instructors and their project mentor/sponsor.