The objective of this class was to obtain ways of thinking more deeply about business strategy regarding sustainability. As a professor and almost all of the students in the class were native English speaker, it was a tough time for me to catch up the content, especially American jokes.
Textbook
Sustainability is one of the most important factors which we cannot ignore these days. The professor began the class with an assumption that the economy has given a substantial positive impact on our lives while it also has generated many side effects (e.g., income inequality and environmental destruction). These adverse changes can be regarded as market changes or cultural changes, so throughout case studies the class tried to teach how companies develop their businesses corresponding to the changes.
Of course, he claims that we can achieve both sustainability and economic growth (as he is the professor of sustainability). I could not learn any new knowledge or perspectives in the class. It might be an excellent class for those who have never learned environmental protection or sustainability.
I have two arguments in general about sustainability. First, in my understanding, a few companies can balance sustainability and economic growth, but this implies that almost all of the companies in competitive markets cannot balance them. For the companies which have struggled to survive concerning sustainability, the class (or other classes in this field) does not provide any frameworks like being given in common strategy classes; hence I cannot say the class can give strategic viewpoints enough to make sure that we can do better after learning something in the class.
Second, I felt most people are very optimistic about the future new technology development when it comes to sustainability. It seems that the professor studied chemical engineering at MIT, and his opinion is like we will be able to solve environmental problems in the future because the new technology development will go well. I expected he understands how difficult to develop any new technology. But, do you agree that the new technology development in recent years, especially new energy and environmental protection technology, has been well more than we expected, realized, and enjoyed in the past few decades? At least the development of energy storage devices has never experienced drastic progress in the past several decades but included many cheap tricks (of course I recognize many scientists have made great efforts in this field). I feel there should be more specialists having a little more pessimistic viewpoint on the new technology development (even if they may lose their jobs once they express such opinions in public).
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