In this graduate-level course, integrate key concepts of innovation and sustainability with societal, environmental, and business success by exploring how businesses and other organizations can use sustainable practices for the long-term well-being of stakeholders, including society and the natural environment.
Course Introduction:
This graduate-level course explores the challenges faced by businesses and societies in ensuring the well-being of all stakeholders in the face of economic, environmental, and social changes. Topics include sustainability issues such as climate change, social equity, biodiversity preservation, and poverty elimination, as well as innovative approaches to address these challenges, such as dematerialization, product stewardship, renewable energy generation, biomimicry, and circular economy. Students will learn about a wide range of sustainable innovation strategies and how businesses and organizations can effectively implement them.
Course Units:
- Unit 1: Definitions and Concepts
- Unit 2: Sustainability Policies, Practices, and Leadership
- Unit 3: Integrating Entrepreneurship with Innovation and Sustainability
Course Learning Objectives:
- Identify the key components of innovation and sustainability and their connection to one another;
- Assess issues related to innovation and sustainability by identifying the pros and cons of certain courses of action and the ethical and values-based roots of those issues;
- Analyze cultural, ideological, and practical perspectives on innovation and sustainability and ways individuals, communities, and organizations express these perspectives and put them into practice; and
- Incorporate elements of innovative sustainability into a specific business or sector by developing a hypothetical entrepreneurial startup organization.
Continuing Education Units: 4.5