Program Overview
15.913 Strategies for Sustainable Business: Today, organizations of all kinds - including traditional manufacturing firms, those that extract resources, a huge variety of new start-ups, non-profits, and governmental organizations of all types - are tackling the massive challenges of sustainability. For some, this shift offers real opportunities — for new products and services, for reinventing old ones, or for solving problems in new ways. Other organizations tackling sustainability are engaged in very real struggles in which the solutions are far from obvious. Alongside questions about the problems of sustainability and how to reconcile free-market capitalism with the need for more sustainable business practices are real questions about how to move along the path towards sustainability. How can we translate these real-world challenges into future business opportunities? How can individuals, organizations, and society learn and undergo change at the pace needed to create a sustainable world?
Using in-class simulations, cases, role-playing, and speakers, we'll explore emerging strategies for sustainable businesses and organizations.
This class is the pre-requisite for the 15.915 Sustainable Business Lab (S-Lab), which focuses on the “live” project during which participants will work in groups of three to four people with an organization that has requested the Sloan School’s help in thinking through an issue related to sustainability. Prior projects have included work with large companies like Disney, Intel and Nike, smaller companies like Good Energies, GoLoCo and Green Fuel Technologies and NGOs like Clinton Climate Initiative, US Business Council for Sustainable Development, and MiBanco. Past projects have developed new tools or approaches, structured new strategies for organizational sustainability, and assessed market opportunities.
Syllabus for 15.913 & 15.915 Spring 2012 
S-Lab Brochure 2009
S-Lab Brochure 2008
S-Lab Brochure 2007
This website is focused on providing potential host companies with an in-depth view of the program. If your firm is considering becoming a host company for S-Lab, please explore the site to learn about our program and our teams' outstanding success in delivering value to the companies who host them. If you have other questions or ideas or would like your firm to participate, please contact us at: jjay@mit.edu.
