Summer School: Inside Harvard’s New Online Course Teaching MBAs The Business of Climate Change

Since earning a law degree from Universidade de São Paulo, Sabrina Montovanelli has had a long-term goal of working in energy transition to tackle climate change. She felt like Harvard Business School was the perfect fit for her MBA aspirations.

The school’s extensive selection of second-year electives – “Cities, Structures, and Climate Shocks,” “Tough Tech Ventures,” “Energy,” and others – aligned with her interests as did HBS’ array of the extracurriculars in the space. She is on the leadership team of the Energy and Environment Group, organizing events like the Climate Symposium. Not to mention HBS’ vast network of sustainability, energy, and climate leaders.

This summer, before ever stepping into an HBS classroom, Montovanelli got her first lesson. She was one of 44 current HBS MBAs to complete a new, five-week course offered by HBS Online, “Business and Climate Change.”

“Considering that HBS’s first-year MBA consists solely of a required generalist curriculum, I saw the course as an opportunity to dive into this critical topic from the very start of my MBA,” Montovanelli, MBA ‘26, tells Poets&Quants.

“I hoped to gain skills that I could apply in future classes, bringing insights to my section discussions on climate change, examples of companies implementing business solutions, and methods for assessing climate stress effects. I also wanted to connect early on with professors working in the climate change field, which would help guide my choices for the Elective Curriculum in my second year.”

The optional online summer course was offered to all first- and second-year MBAs at HBS, and organizers see it as a model to disseminate similar content to MBAs and business schools across the world.

BUSINESS AND CLIMATE CHANGE

“Business and Climate Change” was developed by two prominent HBS professors: Mike Toffel, the Senator John Heinz Professor of Environmental Management, and Forrest Reinhardt, the John D. Black Professor of Business Administration. Groundwork actually started about five years ago as the two were thinking about how to deliver more business and climate change content not just to HBS students, but to people all over the world – whether they’re working professionals or students at other levels and institutions.

Most HBS Online courses at that time were adaptations of existing classroom courses, either electives or parts of the core. But there wasn’t a class like “Business and Climate Change” and the two started building the content from the ground up. They interviewed around 50 people, including faculty from across Harvard and other schools, NGOs, and managers from a wide array of industries.

“We wanted to understand how they were handling and perceiving business and climate change, and that shaped the structure of the course,” says Toffel who is co-faculty director of the course along with Reinhardt.

The course was first offered to business professionals, entrepreneurs, and investors through the HBS Online platform in Fall 2023. It is a 25- to 30-hour, self-paced course open to anyone who’d like to enroll. The next five-week section begins November 6 at a cost of $1,850.

This summer, the MBA program and HBS’ Business & Environment Initiative (BEI) partnered to offer the course to all first- and second-year MBAs. Some 44 – at least two from each of HBS’s nine sections – took them up on the offer.

Second-year MBA Lia Turrini was one of them. She saw the course as a chance to add to her selection of electives in the climate space. She previously worked at Shell, leading grassroots employee efforts to accelerate the energy transition within the company. She was part of the Innovation & Performance team charged with identifying disruptive climate technologies and sustainable business models.

Turrini is also president of the HBS Energy & Environment Club, and used insights from the course to engage the community and attract new members. Many of her classmates, first year and second year, are looking to pivot into the climate space, driven to tackle what they see as one of the planet’s biggest challenges.

“It was eye-opening to appreciate the scale of impact (of climate change) but also provided inspiration,” Turrini, MBA ‘25, tells P&Q. “One of the most interesting modules was the one on adaptation and how society must prepare for the risks brought by climate change. This will create new business opportunities, because a lot must be evaluated, predicted, planned and built to support our society.”

SCIENCE, ECONOMICS, AND MITIGATION OF CLIMATE CHANGE

“Business and Climate Change” is divided into three sections. The first week provides an overview of the science of climate change as well as the economic and policy environment surrounding it. For example: Why haven’t markets or governments been able or willing to solve this problem?

The second section focuses on adaptation, looking at the physical changes and challenges climate change is bringing – excessive heat, drought, hurricanes, sea-level rise, etc. The course looks at how companies are perceiving these changes and what they’re doing to deal with them.

The third covers decarbonization, or mitigation. Case studies examine companies that are being proactive about addressing climate change: how they calculate their carbon footprint and how – whether through internal operations, product design, or supply chains – they can reduce it.
Should BMW, for example, declare a phase-out or an “all-of-the-above” strategy as it transitions from internal combustion engines to battery electric vehicles? What did it take for New Belgium Brewing’s Fat Tire Ale to earn its carbon-neutral label? And, on the adaptation side, how is Munich Re, a large reinsurance company, assessing and managing climate risks?

“Every MBA student, regardless of the industry they enter, is going to confront climate adaptation and mitigation issues in their careers. They need to understand what’s driving that and what are the options,” Toffel says.

To be sure, there are plenty of ways MBAs at Harvard can engage with sustainability. HBS Online courses in sustainable investing and business practices, for example, have climate content. Similarly, there are many electives for second-year MBAs that cover anything from the energy transition to tough tech entrepreneurship – startups tackling extremely challenging problems that require substantial research and development. HBS also offers climate related Sprints and SIPs (Short Intensive Programs). But nothing that covers both adaptation and mitigation with a science and policy primer as “Business and Climate Change” does, Toffel says.

The course is also a differentiator for HBS itself. Toffel doesn’t know of any other school that offers MBAs a deep dive into business and climate change even before they arrive on campus.

“We’re trying to hit students largely as they are arriving, so that they have this information as they go through the core,” Toffel says. “So, as they’re in accounting or strategy or operations, there are at least a few students in each of our sections who are primed to ask questions or offer perspectives that bring in the climate angle.”

DINNER WITH THE DEAN

HBS’ Business & Environment Initiative (BEI) was launched almost 15 years ago as the central hub for climate and environment-related activities at Harvard Business School. This involves working with faculty as they expand their research, connecting them to collaborate with one another, assisting with course development, and identifying where there’s student demand or gaps in the curriculum.

It also works closely with the Career Development Office to advise students on careers, helping them understand what employers are looking for, particularly as companies increasingly seek skills related to climate challenges. It connects students with opportunities in entrepreneurship , partnering with the Rock Center for Entrepreneurship and the Innovation Lab, says Lynn Schenk, BEI director.

In that vein, BEI subsidized the cost of the course for HBS MBAs and will continue to do so for future cycles.

Schenk also sees the course as a way for like-minded MBAs to find each other and come together before their in-person coursework begins. It hosted a private dinner with the 44 students and dean Srikant Datar.

“The dean stayed for hours, networking and engaging with the student. He was the last one to leave,” Schenk says. “So, part of the positive feedback wasn’t just about the content of the course itself, but also how it helped build a sense of community. The students were able to connect with each other and recognize that they shared a common mission, even before arriving on campus.”

Ultimately, both Schenk and Toffel hope to make the course available to more people – whether working professionals, executives, or students at other schools. Schenk often collaborates with other business schools on ways to infuse more climate content into MBA curriculums and the overall experience. She is already sharing this course and what was learned with her network.

“I think it’s really important that this content has the ability to get in front of all MBA students at some point, and this was a valuable test phase. It stems from a genuine belief in the quality of the course and its ability to meet students where they are. There’s a range of potential audiences and learners for this course,” Schenk says.

“My goal is to get this knowledge in front of as many people as possible who will, at one point or another, be in control positions in the business world.”

THE ‘FUNDAMENTAL THREAT THE TO THE WORLD’

For Isaac Hendrik Kim, MBA ‘26, an unexpected benefit of “Business And Climate Change” was that it provided a crash course in HBS’ case method before showing up to the in-person classroom.

Kim graduated from West Point in 2016 and served for eight years as a UH-60 Black Hawk Pilot and Army Aviation Officer. He was also the executive officer to the Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) chief of staff, the headquarters responsible for ensuring the continued defeat of ISIS. He decided to join the Army 23 years ago after his dad survived the September 11 attack on the Pentagon.

“Now, I see climate change as the fundamental threat to the world,” he tells P&Q. He someday wants to work in sustainability from the strategy and operations side or work in impact investing.

His summer course has already given him a leg up. This fall, during a discussion on the e-liability accounting method to account for all scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions in one of his first-year core courses, Kim used lessons learned to inform his answers.

“I think all business leaders need to understand the fundamental concepts of climate change,” Kim says.

“As I progress throughout my career, the lessons learned from this course will give me the foundation but more importantly the curiosity to dig deeper and to continue to expand my understanding of the complex and intricate relationships that exist ecologically, politically, and economically in regards to climate change and business.”

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