This course is for students interested in the sustainability, and the ways in which sustainability affects corporate behavior, public policy, and individual decision-making. It is clear that future leadership in the sustainability area will come from, and indeed must come from, the private sector. Many businesses are coming to the conclusion that it is in their best interest (meaning their bottom line can be improved) if they provide leadership in addressing a variety of societal problems. In addition to discussions regarding environmental issues, the class will serve as an introduction to the role that businesses are now playing with respect to issues involving people, communities and social justice/human rights.

The outline of new roles for corporations, regulatory agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), trade associations, and the public is being developed. This outline is premised on the belief that greater environmental and social gains can be achieved by the private sector through a process oriented around increasing efficiencies, preventing the creation of waste, and more meaningful involvement of all interested and affected parties. Since effective corporate management will mean learning to work with all stakeholders, this course seeks a mix of students, representing varying perspectives and disciplines.

This course covers the relationship between systems thinking and the concept of sustainability. Systems thinking—seeing the underlying structures that drive our behavior and the interconnections in our world—is a key management skill for the 21st century. Understanding the power of structure can help leaders unlock their organization's potential and avoid unintended consequences. Though this is not solely a class about society's growing interest in corporations (both from a social and environmental perspective), it is clear that business plays a central role in our progress (or our lack of progress) toward sustainability. The market remains the most effective means we know of to allocate scarce and valuable resources in ways that maximize social outcomes.

This class brings together Business School students with students from the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies (and other schools and programs on campus) to understand how and where to intervene in existing systems in order to bring about institutional change. The class is case study based and focuses on how to bring about sustainable change in an organization. It has been organized to give you better insights into how sustainable development can be a part of most decisions that are made, whether at the individual lifestyle level or at the organizational level. The key benefits of the class include:

• understanding sustainable development as an important element of business practices and a value driver
• seeing how environmental and social issues are an integral (and complex) part of the landscape in which business operates
• learning about emerging trends in socially responsible investment that are pushing sustainable development further into mainstream investing, and
• appreciate the inter-relatedness of business systems and natural systems

The Clean Tech Thought Leader Community Forum introduces the Business, Environment & Social Responsibility (BESR) community to thought leaders working on the many front lines of clean technology, including technical fields (wind, solar, hydropower, biofuels, green construction, transportation) and non-technical fields (entrepreneurialism, investment, public policy, marketing and even job-hunting). Through the forum series, we provide information and networking opportunities to UW students and the Madison Community. We provide stories from practitioners in the field on challenges they've met, trends they see and the successes they've realized. Our goal is to inspire discussion, allow relationships to develop and further the understanding of what is happening around Wisconsin.

This course is intended for students who have an interest in:

1. the Green and sustainable aspects of housing and commercial property development and operation
2. the re-use and / or rehabilitation of existing structures
3. redevelopment of historic buildings into housing or commercial space
4. related special topics such as financing sources, tax issues, financial structuring, legal issues and energy cost management

The course will acquaint you with both the approach, and the necessary tools such as financing, government programs and regulations, that a successful developer will need to understand in order to succeed.

This course explores the relationship between firm environmental performance and competitive advantage. Students will learn about issues of assessing firm environmental performance, develop an understanding of how to analyze and leverage possible links between firm environmental and financial performance, and learn how firms can pursue a set of non-market strategies to influence regulatory frameworks to benefit both a firm's position and its natural environment. The class focuses on case discussions and theoretical background readings, supported with occasional class speakers, to provide students with an appropriate balance of know what, why and how for addressing issues in the realm of environmental business strategy.

Sustainability, Environmental and Social Risk Management has grown in importance as individuals, businesses, governments and societies have become increasingly concerned about the state of our environment and how best to manage and relate to our environment. More recently, social responsibility risks, which deal with the unfair and inequitable treatment of workers, communities and people of other countries, have emerged. RMI 650, Sustainability, Environmental and Social Risk Management, examines existing and emerging environmental and social responsibility risks and designing and implementing risk management programs for controlling and financing these risks.

This course discusses sustainable approaches to group-based improvement of multifunctional systems involving several stakeholders with diverse wants and needs. Such improvement requires simultaneous resolution of several objectives, often related to the natural environment, reputation and brands, profits, customer satisfaction, cost, response time, quality, work life, efficiency or technology. The course involves a leadership perspective and addresses both philosophical and methodological approaches to sustainable improvement. Topics include strategic contextual analysis, formulation and communication of mutually beneficial objectives, measurement, systems and cause analysis, and implementation issues. Approaches considered include six and green sigma, quality improvement processes, consensus building involving communication and political approaches, flow and infrastructure development, system stratification, theory of constraints, cost value analysis, system simulation and learning, and approaches driven by the natural world.

This course discusses sustainable breakthrough design principles and methods and their deployment into organizational systems for creating new products and services. Topics include analysis of the natural world, markets, customers and technology for design purposes, product and service strategy, deployment into early stage design, infrastructure assessment and development, analysis and development of supply chains and customer chains, and prototype testing. Methodology includes design for the environment, life cycle assessment; product based environmental systems, design for six sigma, design for modularity, design for reuse, inverse manufacturing, design for disassembly, cradle to cradle and cross-cycle design, biomimicry, quality function deployment (qfd) and environmental qfd. Design targets may be services, products, systems or the built environment.

This course discusses strategic breakthrough that supports both an organization's mission and its journey toward sustainability, with emphasis on deployment into organizational operations and practices. In contrast to strategic formulation that occurs primarily at the top of an organization, this course focuses on the infrastructure development and deployment of breakthrough objectives and strategies at each level of an organization's operations, from routine management to product development and other cross functional activities. In order for an organization to sustain itself and improve, when operating within an environment that is rapidly changing, the organization must be able to conduct coordinated breakthrough and innovation at both local and organization-wide levels. Although sustainability can include competitive and positioning strategies, breakthrough is more focused on innovation and new 'blue ocean' paradigms that leapfrog competitors and dwarf traditional strategic approaches. Sustainable breakthrough requires a systems approach, development of effective communication networks, strategic planning that accounts for emerging strategy, linked action, leadership throughout the organization, measurement, and organizational learning. Topics include sustainability approaches; analyses of the natural world and the environment; infrastructure development; deployment approaches and styles; integration into daily practices; and development of employees and learning systems. Methods include hoshin kanri and policy deployment, deployment tools such as A3, deployment technology, and measurement.