What is the Business & Environment Initiative?What is the Business & Environment Initiative?   

Inspiring innovation and action at the intersection of business and environment 

Climate Rising Podcast 

Telling Climate Stories at Scale: Netflix's Strategy for Sustainability and Impact

  • 11 SEP 2024
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  • Climate Rising
In this episode of Climate Rising, we explore how Netflix, a global entertainment powerhouse, is leveraging its platform to tell compelling stories about climate change. Stewart, Netflix's first Sustainability Officer, joins host Mike Toffel to discuss the company’s strategic approach to sustainability, and the importance of embedding climate themes in popular content. Stewart shares insights into the challenges and opportunities of incorporating climate considerations into both operations and storytelling, revealing how Netflix is contributing to the global climate conversation.
In this episode of Climate Rising, we explore how Netflix, a global entertainment powerhouse, is leveraging its platform to tell compelling stories about climate change. Stewart, Netflix's first Sustainability Officer, joins host Mike Toffel to discuss the company’s strategic approach to sustainability, and the importance of embedding climate themes in popular content. Stewart shares insights into the challenges and opportunities of incorporating climate considerations into both operations and storytelling, revealing how Netflix is contributing to the global climate conversation.

Faculty & Research 

Can AI Match Human Ingenuity in Creative Problem-Solving?

  • 26 AUG 2024
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  • Research & Ideas
Generative AI handles a variety of business tasks, but can it develop creative solutions to problems? Yes, although some of the best ideas emerge when humans and machines work together, according to research by Jacqueline Ng Lane, Karim Lakhani, Miaomiao Zhang, and colleagues.

Iogen: Decarbonizing Hard-to-Abate Sectors

By: George Serafeim, Charlotte Foody and John Mulliken
  • AUGUST 2024
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  • Case
Brian Foody, CEO of Iogen Corporation, was an early leader in advanced biofuels, developing a range of technologies to transform agricultural waste into transportation fuel. With $100 million in revenue and 350 patents across various biofuel technologies, Iogen was looking to the future - towards the energy transition. In the spring of 2024, Iogen was advancing a promising new technology. It used agricultural waste (e.g., corn stalks) – a feedstock that would otherwise be left in the field to rot – to produce hydrogen, maritime and jet fuel. This process permanently removed more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than was emitted through the production process and as a result, gave Foody optimism about the commercial prospects of the technology. Foody believed the technology had the carbon savings, cost effectiveness, and scalability needed to decarbonize several hard to abate sectors. Nevertheless, he saw challenges in its commercializing given the nascent markets, developing regulatory landscapes, competing technologies and vast capital expenditures needed to bring the technology to market. What markets should he target? How could he develop a business model that was competitive in today’s environment? How could he get investors comfortable enough to support Iogen?

Mitigating Climate Change with Machine Learning

By: Michael W. Toffel, Kelsey Carter, Amy Chambers, Avery Park and Susan Pinckney
  • AUGUST 2024
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  • Teaching Material
This note highlights how machine learning is being used to decarbonize (reduce GHG emissions) several key sectors including electricity, transportation, building, industrial processes, and agriculture -- and how machine learning is being used to accelerate efforts to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (carbon removal).

The Business Roundtable’s Stakeholder Pledge, Five Years Later

By: Lynn S. Paine
  • AUGUST 19, 2024
  • | 
  • Harvard Business Review Digital Articles
Five years ago, the Business Roundtable issued a statement pledging to “lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders.” In the past five years, stakeholderism has gained wider acceptance and helped many corporate leaders see the value of taking the interests of their stakeholders seriously when planning, developing strategy, making decisions, assessing risks, allocating resources, and so on. But that is a far cry from replacing shareholder capitalism as the central organizing principle for U.S. companies. For that to happen, much more is required. Proponents will need to define more clearly what stakeholder capitalism is, strengthen its theoretical foundations, and develop a playbook for implementing it, including metrics for measuring performance and guidelines for making tradeoffs. They will also need to build an ecosystem of investors, executives, directors, advisors, and other professionals (lawyers, bankers, accountants, analysts, and so on) who understand and support it, embed its precepts in law and regulation, and educate future leaders in its tenets and practices.

Supporting a Community of Learners

MBA Experience

As an MBA student at HBS, you will prepare yourself for leadership in a rapidly changing world in which natural resources are increasingly scarce and the threat of climate change ever more urgent.
How organizations can connect with students

Alumni

The Business & Environment Initiative connects alumni with students, faculty, and each other for learning, careers, and impact.

Executive Education

An advanced curriculum for corporate and nonprofit executives from all over the world to prepare them for new levels of leadership.
Agribusiness Seminar

Videos 

Climate Change: Accelerating Solutions 

As we increasingly experience the effects of climate change – predicted by scientists over 50 years ago – business is vital.
Initiatives focus on societal challenges that are too complex for any one discipline or industry to solve alone.