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 (Fall 2021-Spring 2022) in the required curriculum include:

Your First Year

Business, Government and the International Economy

Bangladesh: Into the Maelstrom

Key concepts: Climate Change, Adaptation, Climate Justice, Business and Government Relations

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.

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

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?

Rio Tinto vs. the Securities and Exchange Commission

Key concepts: Business and Government Relations, Business Ethics, Corporate Governance

Leadership and Corporate Accountability

Battle for the Soul of Capitalism: Unilever and the Kraft Heinz Takeover Bid (A)

Key concepts: Decision Making, International Business, Mergers and Acquisitions, Value Creation

Under Polman's leadership, Unilever focused on long-term shareholder value accretion with a multi-stakeholder approach that emphasized global growth in revenues and earnings through deep penetration in rapidly growing emerging markets and creation of competitive advantage through sustainability. In Polman's eight years at the helm, Unilever had delivered a 190% return to its shareholders. The case presents Polman's dilemma: a takeover of Unilever by KHC/3G could erode the company's commitment to sustainability and a multi-stakeholder model, and the 18% premium of KHC/3G's offer undervalued Unilever and its long-term value creation strategy.

Engine No.1: An Impact Investing Firm Engages with ExxonMobil

Key concepts: Impact Investing; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance

TXU (A): Powering the Largest Leveraged Buyout in History

Key concepts: Corporate strategy

This case is designed to support a lively discussion about the relative merits of shareholder vs. stakeholder perspectives in the context of a company that provides a vital public service that has important environmental implications.

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?

Babban Gona: Great Farm

Key concepts: Agricultural Development, Strategy, Nigeria

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.

Ofo

Key concepts: Infrastructure, Bicycles, Transportation, Ride Share

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 Management

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 2022-2023.

Your Second Year

Core Business & Environment Courses

Cities, Structures, and Climate (Spring 2023)

John D. Macomber

The world faces challenges and opportunities in the face of pressures including rapid urbanization as well as existing and worsening scarcity of resources like energy, water, land and power. This course is about building sustainable cities, financing resilient infrastructure, future proofing real estate assets, and examining how businesses and investors think about climate adaptation. This course is primarily designed for students pursuing careers in decarbonizing energy and mobility, in real estate or infrastructure development and finance, in product and service companies providing solutions to these entities, in broader portfolio investing, or in local and regional governments delivering or overseeing these activities to address environmental justice or economic development goals. For the full listing, click here.

Entrepreneurial Solutions to the World’s Problems (Fall 2022)

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.

Global Climate Change (Spring 2023)

Gunnar Trumbull

The course assesses the origins, context and implications of climate change for business and society. It explores how and why we have created climate change; how it will change the world we live in; and how we can and will respond to it. The course covers the scientific, economic, social, political, and ethical context of that response. Our goal is to treat climate change as a vital context for business over the coming decades, and to explore both the challenges and opportunities it creates across a range of sectors and regions. For the full listing, click here.

IFC: Denmark and Netherlands; Decarbonization and Sustainable Production (January 2023)

Willy Shih, Mike Toffel

This EC Field Course offering a unique educational experience, where students will get to observe and interact with business leaders engaged in decarbonization including renewable energy production and storage, and sustainable production of industrial and consumer goods. For the full listing, click here.

Purpose-Driven Marketing (Spring 2023)

Elizabeth A. Keenan

In the face of global challenges from widening inequality to a climate in crisis, it is becoming increasingly clear that many consumers want the values of brands they engage with to align with their own, and business is responding. What was once a niche differentiation strategy is now a nearly ubiquitous manifestation of Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR. However, it is no longer enough for a business to simply align its image, products, or services with a particular cause. Instead, businesses are expected to be purpose-driven and committed to incorporating beliefs and causes into the core of their brands and supporting long-term initiatives for the sake of an equitable, sustainable and prosperous world. In return, purpose-driven businesses have been shown to experience faster growth and increased customer satisfaction. For the full listing, click here.

Reimagining Capitalism: Business and Big Problems (Spring 2023)

Ethan Rouen

This course is designed for students who want to explore the idea that business has a role in dealing with these big environmental and social challenges. We will examine how private firms can play a major role in solving them in today’s world. We will also explore the ways in which accomplishing this monumental goal may require changes in how firms and leaders consider their obligations and engage with the issues, as well as rethinking the “rules of the game” by which capitalism is structured. For the full listing, click here.

Risks, Opportunities, And Investments In The Era Of Climate Change (ROICC) (Fall 2022)

George Serafeim

This is a course where students apply newly learned skills on measuring climate-related risks and opportunities to design climate transition strategies, make investments, valuing climate-related risk and growth, and designing contracts that incorporate climate metrics. The course covers major risks and opportunities arising from climate change, specifically transition risks and opportunities and physical risk. For the full listing, click here.

Social Entrepreneurship and Systems Change (Fall 2022)

Brian Trelstad

Social entrepreneurs don’t just build organizations, they change systems. This course looks at social entrepreneurship through the lens of traditional entrepreneurship, but asks how people motivated by disrupting entrenched and often inequitable systems differ from traditional entrepreneurs: from their mindset and character, to their capacity for systems thinking and empathetic product design, to how they navigate diverse sources of capital to build either for-profit, nonprofit, or hybrid organizations. The course also looks at how systems change requires entrepreneurs to think beyond their own organizations to collaborate within their field and to motivate collective action, and to combine direct impact with the indirect effects of changing culture and shaping policy For the full listing, click here.

Sustainable Investing (Spring 2023)

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.

Tough Tech Ventures (Spring 2023)

Joshua Lev Krieger & Jim Matheson

While tough technology has the potential to transform incumbent industries and tackle our most pressing societal issues, the tough tech ventures which design and deploy these solutions confront a number of challenges that are distinct from those faced by more mainstream startups. This course has been built from the ground up to dig deeply into these challenges and to provide impactful and actionable frameworks which build on all the tools learned so far at HBS to overcome them in order to drive impact at scale. For the full listing, click here.

Key Industry Verticals

Food and Agribusiness (Spring 2023)

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

Capitalism and the State (CATS) (Fall 2022)

Debora L. Spar

Capitalism today is under attack, criticized from many quarters as being the source of societal ills that range from inequality and systemic racism to climate change and labor market disruption. The goal of CATS is both to examine these criticisms and, more importantly, to interrogate the deep and fundamental connections between the market structures of capitalism and the political structures of the states that seek to support and nourish this system. What are the political prerequisites of a working capitalist system, the course will ask. What are the political risks inherent in a market economy, and what kinds of solutions, both economic and political, are best suited to address the current slate of concerns? For the full listing, click here.

Corporate Governance and Boards of Directors (Spring 2023)

Lynn S. Paine

Throughout the course, we will explore differing conceptions of “good governance” and what they mean in practical terms for boards, executives and companies. We will consider, for instance, the implications of departures from the long-standing norm of “one-share, one-vote” as seen in many recent IPOs such as the Snap, Inc., offering. We will also examine contemporary debates about shareholder activism, board diversity, board leadership, executive compensation, environmental and social factors in governance, hostile takeovers, and the market for corporate control. For the full listing, click here.

Creating Value in Business and Government (HKS-HBS Joint Degree Seminar) (Fall 2022)

Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard

The course features a series of integrative modules on specific topics. In each of the modules, pairs of faculty members, one from HBS and one from HKS, teach as a team, bringing their distinctive perspectives and analytical approaches to bear on a specific subject area. These subject areas may be defined by: policy realms (for example, finance, tax, health, education, environment, or national defense); methods (for example, decision making under uncertainty, project evaluation, performance measurement, or negotiation); or other topics (for example, international trade, technological innovation, economic development, infrastructure, insurance, management styles and processes, or risk management). For the full listing, click here.

Entrepreneurial Finance (Fall 2022, Spring 2023)

Shai Bernstein (Fall), Raymond Kluender (Spring), Jim Matheson (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 2022)

Geoffrey G. Jones

EGC 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 2022)

Kyle Myers

The Lab to Market field course is designed to outline a path that begins with a discovery in a lab, and then pushes towards the market. The course is designed for students who want to pursue management or entrepreneurship opportunities in science-focused organizations. For the full listing, click here.

Finance and Capitalism (Fall 2022)

Joshua Coval & Richard Ruback

The course will enable students to analyze and understand how financial business decisions affect the overall welfare of society. The course will emphasize situations in which the pursuit of business profits both positively and negatively affect their communities, including their employees, local physical and social environments, educational and cultural opportunities and the like. It will also explore the larger impact of capitalism on economic growth and living standards, along with the role that capitalism can play and has played in exacerbating and/or ameliorating broader societal challenges, including climate change, environmental degradation, inequality, and social immobility. The course will delve into current topics and concerns with the goal of providing a less political and more analytical framework for students to form their own views about these important societal issues. For the full listing, click here.

Globalization and Emerging Markets (Spring 2023)

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, as well as for those who wish to acquire a richer conceptual understanding of the nature of capitalism, globalization, and economic development worldwide. The unit of analysis of the course ranges from the international system as a whole through individual countries, alone and in comparative perspective, to multinational and domestic companies operating in emerging markets. Students are asked to adopt the perspective of different decision-makers, such as politicians, technocrats, investors, and managers. For instance, students may have to take the perspective of the head of a major Indonesian conglomerate seeking to expand operations in Brazil, a private gas company navigating governance disputes in Iraq, local and central authorities confronting a pandemic in China, or the Prime Minister of Bhutan considering the development of a new hydropower project. For the full listing, click here.

Grand Challenges for Entrepreneurs (Fall 2022)

Tarun Khanna

Science and technology offer an opportunity to address the most vexing problems of our time. Business process innovations alone will not be enough to ensure access to clean water in the face of climate change, provide urgent medical treatments in remote locales, diffuse novel technologies invented in emerging markets, or investigate the possibilities that space exploration opens up. These Grand Challenges, by their very definition, involve considerable scientific and social uncertainty. Even to experts, they may seem intractable, unapproachable, or too big to solve. They demand creative, novel interventions, and require an ability to imagine and engineer new futures. For the full listing, click here.

Public Entrepreneurship (Fall 2022)

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 2022)

Mark R. Kramer

Can corporate leaders embrace a social purpose in ways that actually deliver both positive social impact and better economic performance? We examine both purpose-built companies and the delicate balancing act required for large public companies to re-invent themselves around a social purpose in response to changing societal and shareholder pressures. We also devote a module to shared value investing, exposing the flaws in ESG ratings and linking social purpose to alpha. In addition, we will examine the ways companies perpetuate inequality and structural racism, confronting controversial questions about whether we can rely on capitalism to create an equitable and sustainable world. For the full listing, click here.

The Role of Government in Market Economies (Spring 2023)

Matthew Weinzierl

The course opens with a case on why a hypothetical competitive market economy can be used as a starting point for analyzing what role government should play. Market economies are miraculous when at their best: flexible, decisive, and self-correcting. But markets are not always at their best, and the first module of the course confronts major real-world departures from this hypothetical starting point. These departures mean that government policy can improve the efficiency of the economy, in principle making all individuals better off. Policy areas addressed here include antitrust regulation, environmental protection, education, health care, and fiscal and monetary policy. For the full listing, click here.