Innovation and entrepreneurship are compatible business models. UVA Darden School of Business Professor Andrea Larson is at the forefront of a new movement to implement strategies to solve the conflict among economic growth, the ecological system and public health. “It’s innovation that drives our economy forward,” says Larson. “It’s innovation that tries to create a better life.” Larson says the cost of this discrepancy falls disproportionately on the people who don’t have enough resources to correct it.
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Andrea Larson teaches “Sustainable Innovation and Entrepreneurship” at Darden. The business school is trying to become a top 10 school for teaching and research on sustainability, as well as become carbon neutral by 2020. |
In April 2008, Darden Dean Bob Bruner announced a new sustainability initiative. Part of the initiative focuses on the school’s goal to become a zero waste, carbon neutral enterprise by 2020. The school is also focusing on the curriculum: Darden has established a faculty task force to determine and recommend strategies on how to incorporate sustainability issues into the learning experience. The school’s goal is to become a top 10 school for teaching and research that integrate a sustainability mindset by 2013.
Leading the efforts is Erika Herz, who was hired in 2007 as the manager of sustainability programs.
“The initiative is the recognition that sustainability issues are everywhere,” says Herz. “We have to know how to balance the social and environmental challenges and the business opportunities they present.”
Currently, approximately eight courses on sustainability are electives only available to second-year MBA students. Larson teaches two such courses, and she has included a sustainability aspect in her classes for about 10 years. In her “Sustainable Innovation and Entrepreneurship” course, Larson focuses on the nexus of business and natural resources. The course objective is to inform students on the changing dynamics of global nature-human interdependences.
She hopes that the task force will quickly integrate sustainability into Darden’s first-year curriculum.
Darden’s willingness to jump on the green/sustainability bandwagon has followed what one management consulting firm has recognized as the new frontier.
A 2007 McKinsey & Company study of CEOs found that 95 percent of them believe that they are now a part of a greater social contract and that corporate entities are expected by society to increasingly assume public responsibilities.
According to a 2007 ranking by the Aspen Institute thinktank, the percentage of schools that require students to take a course dedicated to business and society issues has increased to 63 percent in 2007 from 34 percent in 2001. Stanford was ranked No. 1 in student opportunity, student exposure, course context and faculty research. Darden ranked No. 24, followed by Dartmouth and Duke.
Both Herz and Larson agree that the 2013 date is a reachable and stimulating deadline. “It’s just a matter of willingness to make these issues a priority, to put resources behind it,” says Larson.
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