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The Business and Environment Initiative at HBS
Topics: Environment-Environmental SustainabilityCareer-Career AdvancementCommunication-ConferencesEducation-Curriculum and CoursesEnvironment-Natural Environment
Issue Focus: Business and the Environment
Established in 2010 and headed by HBS professors Forest Reinhardt and Rebecca Henderson, the Business and Environment Initiative is designed “to deepen our collective understanding of the environmental challenges confronting business leaders and to help them design effective solutions,” explains Reinhardt. “Creating jobs and services that are critical to human well-being without degrading the natural systems that are also critical to our well-being is one of the great challenges — and great opportunities — facing business and business leaders today.”
The BEI aims to accomplish its goals through teaching, research, case writing, conferences, speakers, special events, and student field studies, and through its ability to convene leading businesspeople, academics, and public policymakers and to connect students to alumni mentors. “The initiative is an attempt to focus on a problem that is central to businesspeople but doesn’t fit easily into any one discipline,” says Henderson. “Here at HBS, it’s designed to support faculty working together across disciplines and across the University, and to make sure we’re all aware of each other’s activities and of common issues that come up.” With some 60 faculty members citing the environment as an area of interest, Henderson notes that there are about 200 HBS-authored cases on the environment extant, with more to come at the rate of about 30 to 40 a year. “We’ve launched several new MBA courses and are looking at how we can get more involved in the Executive Education area,” she continues. “We’ve held alumni-focused conferences bringing together key businesspeople to talk about best practices and promising business models. A conference on water, for example, is slated for next spring. We’re also hoping to support more conventional academic-oriented resource conferences, such as one in the works that will result in a special issue of the Journal of Accounting and Economics.”
“It is critical for us to understand the relationships between our economic systems and the natural environment, and to figure out the leadership and governance structures that enable firms to act effectively in this arena,” says Reinhardt. “It is our privilege to work with faculty colleagues from around the University, and with the many HBS alumni who are leaders in this field.”
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