Required Curriculum (1st Year) Cases

Environmental opportunities and challenges are embedded in most Required Curriculum courses so that all students understand the importance of the natural environment to their roles as managers and are equipped to make business decisions involving sustainability issues. Cases are set in a variety of industry contexts, including energy, agriculture, transportation, chemicals, and investment. Some of the environment-related cases recently taught in the required curriculum include:

Your First Year

Business, Government and the International Economy

Climate change: Paris, and the road ahead

Key concepts: climate change, industry regulation, business and government relations

This case starts by reporting various factors that may have contributed to the massive Macondo oil spill, noting that BP, its partners, and the government all made decisions that helped cause the accident. It then discusses the response to this spill by BP and the government. This helps provide some context for the decision by the Obama administration to request $20 billion for a fund from BP and for BP's willingness to go along with this request. The case also depicts BP's safety record before this spill, which may also have contributed to the creation of this fund. After this, the case describes the various ways in which the U.S. government is involved in offshore oil, including the leasing of tracts, the regulation of drilling, and the assessment of fines and damages.

Finance I

Project Helios: Harvesting the Sun

Key concepts: return on investment, financial management, financial planning, solar energy

Aware of the impact that modern society was having on the environment, Ashley Telkes had always tried to be cognizant of her own impact on the environment and to take reasonable steps to mitigate her own effects. Having already implemented a number of passive measures to minimize her “carbon footprint,” Telkes must now confront the bigger decision of whether or not to invest in solar panels to generate electricity for her home. Although pre-disposed to pursue environmentally friendly alternatives, the project entailed significant up-front expenses and Telkes could not afford to make a poor financial decision. Telkes must assess the financial merits of the project, as well as understand the regulatory and technological risks associated with going forward or choosing to delay.

International Carbon Finance and EcoSecurities

Key concepts: business and government relations, investment return, cash flow, valuation, risk management

EcoSecurities has to decide whether to undertake a new Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project in China. The Ventilation Air Methane Project is an opportunity to break into a new sector with large potential, and the economics and risks of the project need to be assessed.

Finance II

Tesla Solar City

Key concepts: M＆A; M＆A Valuation; Investing; Equities; Equity; Valuation; Mergers and Acquisitions; Auto Industry; Energy Industry; United States

In 2016, electric car manufacturer Tesla announced that it was making an offer to acquire solar panel manufacturer SolarCity in an all-stock offer worth $2.6 billion in Tesla stock. Tesla’s co-founder and CEO, Elon Musk, believed that the merger would generate significant cost and revenue synergies, based on his vision of the future of transportation, energy storage, and a “green” economy. However, most Wall Street analysts were highly skeptical of the deal, voicing concerns that the merger would burden Tesla with excessive debt and that Musk was using the deal to advance his personal interests (at the expense of public shareholders) and bail out Tesla. Concerns were raised over possible conflicts of interest, given that Musk owned over 20% of the stock, and sat on the board of directors of both companies. The viability of the merger was also questioned given that neither Tesla nor SolarCity had ever been profitable.

Financial Reporting and Control

Urban Water Partners

Key concepts: Accounting, Financial statements, Entrepreneurship, Start-ups

The case explores a new business venture to bring clean water to residents of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, who otherwise cannot afford it. Management has enough money to get the company through August 2010 but needs more capital thereafter. An HBS alumnus is interested in investing in the company. Management needs to revisit its financial assumptions; decide on an incentive structure for its proposed network of local water vendors; and put together a pro-forma income statement, cashflow statement, and balance sheet in anticipation of meeting with the investor.

JetBlue: Relevant Sustainability Leadership

Key concepts: Core purpose, Environmental sustainability, Mission statement, Financial accounting, Innovation, Leadership, Change management, Metrics, Sustainability

In 2017, JetBlue, the airline founded on the mission to "bring humanity back to air travel", became one of the first companies to report performance according to the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) standards and was first among airlines to adopt the recommendations of the Task Force for Climate-related Financial Disclosures. Despite operating as a smaller player in an industry dominated by few legacy competitors, JetBlue saw themselves as a driver of industry progress. However, was JetBlue's leadership "relevant sustainability leadership"? Moreover, how could developing metrics and improved performance on material sustainability issues be used as an instrument for change management? JetBlue wanted to achieve best-in-class performance on SASB metrics, as they believed sustainability was more than simply a risk mitigation tool. Was it? If so, how could JetBlue receive credit from investors, and competitors, for their sustainability leadership?

Accounting for Nuclear Power Provisions at RWE

Key concepts: Accounting, Liabilities, Energy, Discounts

In early 2016, RWE, a utility that operates nuclear power plants in Germany, came under scrutiny from regulators and the media over the adequacy of its provisions for costs of decommissioning and dismantling (D&D) its nuclear power plants. Accounting standards required utilities to record the present value of projected D&D costs as a liability. However, there were many uncertainties associated with these estimates given the actual cash outlays would be incurred decades into the future. In addition, German government bond rates used to discount projected future costs had fallen to record lows, and RWE, as well as its competitors were struggling with depressed electricity prices. Would RWE's provisions be adequate to cover the future costs?

Leadership and Corporate Accountability

Climate Change in 2020: Implications for Business

Key concepts: Environmental sustainability, Operations, Accounting, Economics, Economic growth, Energy, Pollution, Technology, General management, Risk, Security, Society and business relations, Corporate social responsibility, Organizational problems, Business & government relations, Climate change, Natural disasters, Uncertainty

This note provides general information about climate change and its implications for business. Included is an overview of climate change science and a number of its impacts, including rising sea levels, changing weather patterns and extreme weather, pressure on water and food, political and security risks, human health risks, and impact on wildlife and ecosystems. Next, responses to climate change are outlined, including improvements in energy efficiency, moving away from fossil fuels, changes in land use and agriculture practices, and geoengineering. The note concludes with the debate over how much should be spent to mitigate and adapt to climate change, who should pay, and the implications for the private sector.

Should a Pension Fund Try to Change the World? Inside GPIF's Embrace of ESG 

Key concepts: Pension Funds; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Investment Funds; Environmental Sustainability; Social Issues; Governance; Leading Change; Economy; Performance Improvement; Japan

In the fall of 2018, Hiro Mizuno, the Chief Investment Officer (CIO) of GPIF, the Japanese Government Pension Fund, was reflecting on his efforts to integrate Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues into every aspect of GPIF’s portfolio. His efforts ranged from constructing new stock market indices based on ESG data, changing the compensation and incentives of active investment managers and passive funds, pushing for more corporate sustainability reporting and integrated reporting, and establishing collaborations with other asset owners to drive systems level change. He was convinced that the only way to meet his responsibilities to his beneficiaries was to improve the performance of the entire economy through a focus on improving corporate governance, increasing inclusion in the workplace and gender diversity and reducing environmental damage and progress towards tackling climate change. The early results from his efforts were promising, but was there more he could do?

Strategy

Tesla Motors: Racing into the Future

Key concepts: market entry, economies of scale, technology and innovation, leadership, strategy, competitive advantage

Tesla Motors and its flamboyant CEO, Elon Musk, had an eventful 2018. The company had been ramping up production of its long-awaited Model 3, even as Musk faced intensifying public scrutiny over his leadership of the firm. Eventful years, however, were not new for the company. In its almost 15 years in existence, Tesla had redefined people’s view of electric cars, in the process making its Model S the best-selling electric car in the world, despite being much more expensive than other electric vehicles (EVs). But by 2018, the company faced its biggest challenge yet. Whereas Tesla had struggled with quality problems while ramping up production for the Model X to about 40,000 units per year, its plans for the Model 3 were much more ambitious: achieving a production volume of 400,000 to 500,000 cars, almost the same global volume as the BMW 3 series, in 2 to 3 years’ time. To do so profitably, the company would have to ramp up its Gigafactory battery plant, drastically reduce the cost of its battery packs, and keep demand high. Could it really succeed on all these fronts? Or was this just a bridge too far?

The Entrepreneurial Manager

Panoramic Power

David Almagor and Adi Shamir had co-founded Panoramic Power, an energy management company in 2009. When Almagor and Shamir met with Erez Ofer and his partners at Greylock Israel in January of 2010, they expressed interest in the company's potential but had declined to participate in a funding round. Twelve months later, Almagor and Shamir returned to the offices of Greylock Israel on the heels of product progress and market validation to try again.

Husk Power: Scaling the Venture

Key concepts: Growth, Emerging markets, Entrepreneurship, Growth strategy

In January 2018, Husk Power had just raised $20 million to scale operations for a second time. From 2007 through 2013, Husk built 80 biomass waste (primarily rice husk from rice mills) plants that provided electricity to 250,000 villagers and shop owners spread across 350 villages in India and Africa.
By 2015, Husk underwent a major pivot. Rather than a rural electrification vision aimed at providing power to rural households through biomass gasification alone, Sinha envisioned plants organized around village commercial customers that used biomass gasification, solar energy and battery power in tandem, allowing for power generation nearly 24-7. To bring this vision to reality Sinha ceased operations of nearly all of the existing plant locations and began the conversion to new locations built around the "new" hybrid plant. Thus in 2015, Husk was operating a mere 10 power plants and serving roughly 2000 customers, down from the 80 plants and roughly 250,000 customers they had prior to this shift. After downsizing and reorganizing operations, was Husk Power once again ready to scale?

Ofo

Key concepts: Infrastructure, Bicycles, Transportation

Dai Wei and his co-founders grew Beijing-based ofo from a school-based startup to a bike-share behemoth in a matter of months, topped an all-out market-share battle fueled with almost $1 billion in venture capital, provided 2 billion bicycle rides, soaked up the majority of the bike manufacturing capacity in all of China, and then, in July of 2017, hit pause. The proximate reason for halting their purchase of new bicycles was a supply imbalance: ofo had many more bikes on their way than they did the smart-locks that allowed their customers to unlock them with their cell-phones. But the breather would also give ofo's leaders a chance to re-assess their plans for the rest of the year. For how long, to what end, and at what cost, to wage their market-share battle with main rival, Mobike? How aggressively to pursue their international expansion and what adjustments, if any, to make from their model in dozens of Chinese cities? And what to do about the concerns from government officials that ofo's dockless bikes and those of dozens of competitors were creating hazards on city streets? Wei and four schoolmates at Peking University had launched ofo on their campus with 1000 bikes in fall 2015. Since then, they had deployed 6.5 million. The question now was how many more?

Technology and Operations Managment

Sustainability at IKEA Group

Key concepts: supply chain, customer value chain, growth and development strategy, consumer products

By 2014, IKEA Group was the largest home furnishing company, with EUR28.5 billion of sales, and planned to reach EUR50 billion by 2020, mainly from emerging markets. At the same time, IKEA Group had adopted in 2012 a new sustainability strategy that focused the company's efforts on its entire value chain from its raw materials sourcing to the lifestyle of its end consumers. The plan especially centered on wood, which represented 60% of IKEA Group's total procurement in volume and constituted a key lever for the company to increase its positive impact on sustainability. IKEA Group Management therefore had to decide how to manage its portfolio of wood sustainability initiatives, especially in the context of the company's aggressive growth plan.

Indigo Agriculture: Harnessing Nature

Key concepts: Environmental sustainability, Operations, Social entrepreneurship, Distribution channels, Product development, Platforms, Climate change, Supply chain management, Strategy, Green business, Agriculture, Technology, Agribusiness

Indigo Agriculture used a digital-enabled research and development (R&D) process to launch its initial product, microbial coatings for agricultural seeds, which increase crop yields while reducing the need for fertilizers. In doing so, the company developed direct relationships with farmers, in contrast to typical agricultural supply chains that use intermediaries. The company then launched a marketplace platform to link growers directly to crop buyers, again disintermediating the market. Indigo Agriculture is now considering launching an initiative to incentivize farmers to engage in regenerative agricultural practices by setting up a carbon market that could pay them for sequestering carbon into their soils. If scaled globally, the idea could sequester as much as one trillion tons (a teraton) of carbon dioxide from the earth's atmosphere into agricultural soils, but pursing the idea has many risks.

Elective Curriculum (2nd Year) Courses

In the Elective Curriculum, students may choose from a number of courses that explore the integration of environmental issues and management practices or that address broader issues of sustainable markets.

In their second year, students choose elective courses, many of which focus on or support the understanding of environmental issues as they relate to business. Here are the offerings for 2019-2020.

Your Second Year

Core Business & Environment Courses

Entrepreneurial Solutions to the World’s Problems (Fall 2020)

William Sahlman

The world has a seemingly infinite supply of problems, from climate change to pandemics. The basic premise of this course is that entrepreneurs view problems as opportunities. If healthcare is expensive and ineffective, entrepreneurial teams create ventures (for-profit or not-for-profit) to deliver better health outcomes at lower cost. If burning fossil fuels creates damaging greenhouse gases, then there are opportunities to find new, cleaner ways to produce energy or mitigate its negative impact. If education at all levels costs too much, takes too long, and is mediocre, entrepreneurial teams explore ways to deliver better learning outcomes faster and less expensively. The course will focus on entrepreneurial efforts in healthcare, education, and the environment. For the full listing, click here.

Investing - Risk, Return, and Impact (Spring 2021)

Shawn A. Cole & Vikram S. Gandhi

This is an investing/finance course, designed to build on skills introduced in the RC finance course, but with an emphasis on how and whether investors should incorporate what have traditionally been considered “non-financial” criteria in their decisions: for example, climate risk, environmental sustainability, minority representation on boards, and even the potential to create social good. Covering both public and private markets, the course will present rigorous approaches to business model assessment, valuation, transaction structuring and exits, as well as equity selection and portfolio construction. The course also explores incentives, decision-making, and the crucial problems and opportunities within the industry itself. For the full listing, click here.

Reimagining Capitalism: Business and Big Problems (Spring 2021)

George Serafeim

Free market capitalism is one of the great achievements of mankind, bringing prosperity and economic freedom to billions of people and contributing to a flowering of individual freedom and possibility that would have been unimaginable to our ancestors. Today, however, increasing global crises are posing the greatest threat this economic system has faced. For the full listing, click here.

Social Entrepreneurship and Systems Change (Fall 2020)

Brian Trelstad

Combining the tools of philanthropy, business and advocacy (or mission, margin and mandate), social entrepreneurs have tackled long-standing societal issues like teacher training, college access, global public health, renewable energy and sanitation. Social entrepreneurs seek to maximize social impact while sometimes satisfying a financial return; some use purely charitable approaches while others build attractive for-profit ventures. And yet others rely on the government to scale up through advocacy or political change. These hybrid organizations are blurring traditional organizational boundaries while reshaping a diverse number of fields. But who are these social entrepreneurs? What’s in their DNA? Are the organizations they start traditional non-profits, but just bringing business discipline into their management? Or are they traditional for-profit companies that have spotted new markets and opportunities in the delivery of social or environmental benefits? Or, are they something entirely new? And what kind of capital-from grants to guarantees to social venture capital-is being used to fuel these nonprofits, companies, and campaigns as they grow from early stage ideas to national or international demonstration models? For the full listing, click here.

Sustainable Cities and Resilient Infrastructure (Spring 2021)

John D. Macomber

The world faces challenges including rapid urbanization, declining public health as seen with Covid-19, increasing pressure on the environment and on basic resources, and the growing difficulty governments face in managing the confluence of these trends. This class will appeal to students who would like to explore tools and examples that help investors, entrepreneurs, and policy makers understand and address these issues. Students interested in infrastructure, private equity, real estate, business and environment, and social enterprise also will find the course to be useful. For the full listing, click here.

Key Industry Verticals

Food and Agribusiness (Spring 2021)

Forest Reinhardt

The course will provide a survey of the global food and agribusiness system. While studying the management problems of farmers, processors, branded consumer goods manufacturers and food retailers, we will consider consumer trends, technological advances, public policy issues, food safety, and risk management. The pervasiveness of food and agribusiness makes the course suitable for future consultants and investment bankers in addition to those who have a direct interest in the industry; it may also be of interest as a general management course due to its integrative, cross-functional approach and emphasis on strategy. The course may also appeal to students with interests in political economy and business-government relations, since the firm's ability to capture value is affected by regulatory institutions at the national and global levels. For the full listing, click here.

Other Related Courses

Contemporary Developing Countries: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Intractable Problems (Fall 2020)

Tarun Khanna

This course will provide a framework (and multiple lenses) through which to think about the salient economic and social problems of the five billion people of the developing world, and to work in a team setting toward identifying entrepreneurial solutions to such problems. Case study discussions will cover challenges and solutions in fields as diverse as health, education, technology, urban planning, and arts and the humanities. The modules themselves will be team-taught by faculty from engineering, the arts, urban design, healthcare and business. The course will embrace a bias toward action by enabling students to understand the potential of individual agency in addressing these problems. All students will participate in the development of a business plan or grant proposal to tackle their chosen problem in a specific developing country/region, emphasizing the importance of contextualizing the entrepreneurial intervention. The student-team will ideally be comprised of students with diverse backgrounds from across the University. For the full listing, click here.

Corporate Governance and Boards of Directors (Spring 2021)

Lynn S. Paine

This course should be of interest to most, if not all, students. Some of you will find yourselves serving as a CEO or other senior officer working for a board of directors. Others of you will be entrepreneurs needing to build aboard for your company as a private entity and later as a public company. And of course many of you will serve on one or more boards during your careers, either as an investor, executive, or independent director. The goal of the course is to prepare you to deal with all of these situations, as well as to be an informed shareholder. For the full listing, click here.

Entrepreneurial Finance (Fall 2020, Spring 2021)

Shai Bernstein, Jim Matheson (Fall) & Paul Gompers (Spring)

Entrepreneurial Finance is primarily designed for students who plan to get involved with a new venture at some point in their career -- as a founder, early employee, advisor or investor. However, the course is also appropriate for students interested in gaining a broader view of the financing landscape for young firms, going beyond the basics of venture capital and angel financing to look at venture debt, bank finance, corporate venture capital and receivables financing. For the full listing, click here.

Entrepreneurship and Global Capitalism (Fall 2020)

Geoffrey G. Jones

GC discusses the history of the modern world through the entrepreneurs who shaped it. It emphasizes the challenging contexts these entrepreneurs faced in their times, the difficult decisions they made, and the legacies they left behind. The course is relevant to all future leaders operating in today’s global context, as it considers the roles of entrepreneurs, CEOs, investors, inventors, philanthropists, and politicians. For the full listing, click here.

Field Course: Lab to Market (Fall 2020)

Karim Lakhani & Peter Barrett

The greater Boston area is home to some of the world’s finest research laboratories and hospitals, and together secure billions of dollars in federal, state, non-profit, and private funding to advance the frontiers of knowledge. To bring these technologies to market, there is an ever-growing need for entrepreneurs who can work in technical multidisciplinary teams, secure funding, and pursue commercial opportunities. For the full listing, click here.

Globalization and Emerging Markets (Fall 2020)

Kristin Fabbe

Globalization and Emerging Markets is designed for students who will be investing, managing a business or nonprofit, or working for a government in an emerging or frontier market. The unit of analysis of the course ranges from countries to multinational and domestic companies in emerging markets. Students are asked to take the perspective of different decision-makers, such as politicians, investors, and managers. For instance, students may have to take the perspective of an analyst at an American company contemplating investment in Nigeria's power industry, a private equity investor in Brazilian tech, a large-cap mining firm in Mongolia, a domestic conglomerate in the Philippines, or a muckracking hedge fund in Russia. Many of the cases are set beyond the so-called BRICs of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, in today's "frontier" markets that are only beginning to attract the attention of mainstream investors. The course should appeal to anyone considering spending part of their career working or investing outside of the major developed markets. For the full listing, click here.

Grand Challenges for Entrepreneurs (Fall 2020)

Tarun Khanna

The course is designed for students who are interested in entrepreneurial approaches to the biggest challenges of our time, particularly those that disproportionately affect the fast-growing and populous emerging markets. Invariably, these challenges require solutions that beggar the imagination, and that require an embrace of science, with all its excitement and uncertainty. To misquote Peter Thiel, “We wanted flying cars, let’s not be satisfied with 140 characters.” The course is appropriate for would-be entrepreneurs, as well as those interested in the financing and curation of economic activity at the exciting edges of the knowledge frontier. For the full listing, click here.

Public Entrepreneurship (Fall 2020)

Mitchell Weiss

This course is designed for students who may found, join, or fund private startup companies that sell to (or around) governments to solve giant problems or who may want to become extreme innovators inside government at some point themselves. The cases feature a broad range of contemporary technology applications, and the course may be of particular interest to students curious about AI, autonomy, blockchain, sensors, crowdsourcing, platforms, and related topics. The course also tackles career questions for students who wonder how to spend time making a difference in both the private and public sectors. For the full listing, click here.

Purpose & Profit (Fall 2020)

Mark R. Kramer

In 2020, the world’s largest investor, Blackrock CEO Larry Fink wrote in his annual letter to CEOs that “purpose is the engine of long-term profitability” and that companies must serve the interest of all stakeholders. Is this really true or is it just hyperbole? Does having a social purpose beyond making a profit support or conflict with maximizing shareholder value? More important, how can corporate executives and investors embrace a social purpose and “stakeholder capitalism” in ways that actually deliver better economic performance? For the full listing, click here.

The Role of Government in Market Economies (Spring 2021)

Matthew Weinzierl

This course is about one question: What is the proper role of the government in the market economy? We study the role of government as it plays out in the real world, using vivid case studies from many countries, decades, and policy angles. At the same time, we align these cases with a rigorous theoretical framework that clarifies the circumstances under which government intervention in the market can improve outcomes. For the full listing, click here.

Retailing (Fall 2020)

José Alvarez

The EC Retailing course focuses on delivery mechanisms for consumer goods and services. The course will primarily concentrate on retail stores but we will also study web and catalog based businesses. "Delivery" encompasses all activities of the company that have direct dealings with the consumer including, but not limited to, buying, storing, merchandising, selling, store siting, expansion strategies and marketing. Since the course considers all aspects of the management of retail companies, it may be viewed as a general management course. For the full listing, click here.