by Margie Kelley

In a joint effort to foster a meaningful conversation on the role of business in shaping climate policy, the HBS Business & Environment Initiative (BEI) and the HBS Club of Washington, D.C. presented a substantive panel discussion, “Business and Climate Policy: Your Vital Role,” on February 12, 2020.

Moderated by Michael Toffel, the Senator John Heinz Professor of Environmental Management at HBS and Faculty Chair of BEI, the event drew 100 alumni and guests to the University Club in Washington, where they heard from a panel featuring Donald S. Beyer, U.S. Congressman from Virginia and Co-Chair of the New Democrat Coalition Climate Change Task Force; Anne Kelly, (Harvard Kennedy School, 1996) VP of Government Relations, Ceres; Elizabeth Lewis (MBA 2006), Senior Engagement Officer for Climate and Impact Investing, International Finance Corporation; Sarah Wright Meyers (MBA 1997), Founder & Managing Partner, Hull Street Energy; and Matt Sonnesyn (Harvard Kennedy School, 2002), VP of Infrastructure, Energy, and Environment, Business Roundtable.

“This event was the seventh in a series called The Role of Business Leadership in the Age of Climate Change that HBS has been organizing around the country in partnership with alumni clubs to understand how climate change is shaping the future of business,” says Jennifer Nash, Director of BEI, who coordinated the D.C. event with club members Patrick Coady (MBA 1966), Roger Feldman (MBA 1967), and Club President Higor Sales (MBA 2011). “Each event has been tailored to the specific focus of the alumni in each club. In D.C., policy is a central focus of the discussion around climate change.”

Guided by Toffel, panelists considered how business interests might be fostering, or undermining, government policy on climate.

“The talk was very useful,” says Feldman, who helped organize the event. “It was great to see so much engagement, and it will be important for the BEI to broaden its reach with this subject and discussion. I think alumni need to be challenged to find out how business can do things better. This is a major international problem, and it will need a framework of policies to make a big difference.”

Pat Coady, an investment banker and environmentalist who founded the Northern Virginia Land Trust and who helped to organize the event, says the club was aware of the BEI’s climate-focused road show and was eager to bring it to D.C. “I was very pleased with the turnout, and at the end we had a handful of people sign up to participate in an ongoing discussion group on business leadership and the environment. We think we can turn these gatherings into climate policy field trips around D.C., to places like the World Bank, the Nature Conservancy, or the Business Roundtable. There would be no shortage of events.”

“We welcome this enthusiasm and energy from the clubs,” says Nash. “HBS alumni have a critical role to play on climate action and clubs are a great asset in continuing follow-on discussions.”

If your club has ideas for a specific topic that may fit with BEI’s The Role of Business Leadership in the Age of Climate Change series, please reach out to the HBS Clubs Team at clubsteam@hbs.edu.

Close to 200 guests gathered at the H Club in Covent Garden, London on February 17, to learn more about the impact that artificial intelligence will increasing have on business and the global economy.

HBS Professor Karim R. Lakhani describes his research on business deployment of AI

Gillian Karran-Cumberlege (GMP 1) asks a question

HBS Professor Karim R. Lakhani describes his research on business deployment of AI

Gillian Karran-Cumberlege (GMP 1) asks a question

The HBS Club of London event, cosponsored by the Harvard Business Review, featured speakers Marco Iansiti, David Sarnoff Professor of Business Administration at HBS, and Karim Lakhani, Charles E. Wilson Professor of Business Administration at HBS, who gave a talk entitled, Competing in the Age of AI.

Iansiti is head of the HBS Technology and Operations Management (TOM) Unit and the Digital Initiative. He also advises Global 1000 companies on digital strategy and transformation and has conducted research on a variety of organizations, including Microsoft, Facebook, IBM, Amazon, Alibaba, and Google. Lakhani is the founder and co-director of the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard, and the principal investigator of the NASA Tournament Laboratory at the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science. He is on the Board of Directors of Mozilla Corporation and several AI-based startups.

Sharing their research on hundreds of enterprises in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, Professors Iansiti and Lakhani showed how the deployment of digital networks, data, and AI in a company can create major strategic advantages around scale, scope, and learning while minimizing growth restraints. But they also explained that AI creates major challenges such as algorithmic bias and amplified false information. Companies using AI, they explained, need to rethink management, training, and strategy.

“Both Marco and Karim delivered a thoroughly engaging, entertaining and thought-provoking discussion on how competing in the age of AI is a lot easier than we could imagine,” says event organizer Julie Mulcahy (GMP 24, 2018). “They made AI more accessible to the non-technical professionals among us and showed us also how simple processes can make a huge difference. It was a great evening.”

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