The context for and expectations of corporations and their leaders are undergoing radical change. Population growth, increasing consumerism, globally networked supply chains, and shifts in transparency and communication are creating resource challenges and heightened expectations for governance, social engagement, and environmental stewardship. As a result, managing a sustainable and successful 21st century enterprise requires updated context, skills, frameworks, and vernacular.
This course is designed to prepare leaders for this new operating context. By the end of the semester, you will:
- Understand the roots and implications of climate change and resource scarcity.
- Learn a new mode of thinking that includes systems dynamics and the ability to use systems thinking as a tool to address nonlinear, complex, closed loop challenges.
- Appreciate leverage points with specific focus on the intersection among investors, consumers, governments, and corporations.
- Reconsider corporate purpose in light of newly extended boundaries of responsibility.
- Focus on the importance of serving stakeholders beyond shareholders.
- Narrate a different story and strategy in order to recruit and retain talent while contextualizing and activating strategy.
- Appreciate issues such as resource availability, license to operate, and evolving regulation.
- Learn how to build new relationships, partnerships, and collaborations across functions and sectors.
This course is designed to give you a framework to lead a progressive 21st century corporation. The pedagogy is a designed as a blend of lecture, case studies, practitioners’ experiences, and class discussion in order to provide you with models and tools to improve outcomes. Finally, the course will expose you to new types of challenges and opportunities that you will encounter across the value chain—from finance, to supply chain, to product development, to marketing—and prepare you with models and skills to identify solutions.