Corporate Sustainability & Business Development

Companies increasingly seek to be more sustainable, but many firms struggle to operationalize it within their supply chain or to translate the theoretical concepts into practical value for customers. Sustainability practitioners must not only sell a sustainable product or service but an entire mind-set. In this course, students will gain practical skills through working on a multi-national company-sponsored project, which seeks to bring a specific product to market on a platform of sustainability. The course will guide students, working in teams, through the process of learning the sustainability attributes of the product, assessing market-readiness, getting to know the customer (both the end consumer and intermediaries), and scoping the competition. This will in turn lead students to develop tailored value propositions and marketing tools, which will be presented in a final pitch session.