Collaboration Towards a Common Goal

The role of business schools in empowering the next generation of sustainability-focused entrepreneurs.

Achieving a more sustainable world is one of the most pressing issues we face today, and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a key instrument to help us tackle this challenge. Still, rather than taking a piecemeal approach to the SDGs, it is vital to view them through a holistic lens. Businesses, organisations and communities must contribute to a better world and adopt a collaborative, multi-stakeholder process to attain these goals.

Sustainability and collaboration are important aspects of our mission at INSEAD, where we bring together people, cultures and ideas to develop leaders that can have a transformational impact on the world. That potential impact was recently demonstrated at ChangeNOW, a sustainability summit founded by INSEAD alumni Santiago Lefebvre MBA’15J and Kevin Tayebaly MBA’15J, together with Rose-May Lucotte.

As part of my participation, I joined a panel where we discussed the urgency and challenges of addressing the SDGs, how sustainability-minded entrepreneurship holds the key to meeting 2030 SDG targets and why it is imperative that business schools integrate sustainability across their curricula if we are to prepare the next generation of leaders to understand and act differently.

Preparing the leaders of tomorrow

Globally, there are over 1.8 billion people aged between 10 to 24, the largest youth generation in history. How do we ensure that they have access to the right skills, training and opportunities they need to play a part in achieving the SDGs? Education is key, and as a business school, we believe it is our role to provide students with the tools, instruments, understanding and knowledge about sustainability – as well as the urgency to act.

Leading global business schools such as INSEAD offer a unique opportunity for individuals from around the world, with different views and perspectives, to gather and learn from each other about nuanced sustainability issues. They provide a space where future leaders can work together to find common solutions to important problems that we simply must address. These debates are taking place in our classrooms and on our campuses every day, creating opportunities for us to exchange ideas, find common ground and spark action.

A more focused approach

As of this academic year, we’ve introduced a new MBA curriculum to further encourage this debate and collaboration at INSEAD. In addition to having sustainability present across many of the offered electives, we have embedded it into all 14 MBA core courses.

Specific challenges are brought to life by our leading faculty, who have published over 100 SDG-related papers in the last five years alone. Our students work together to analyse real-world case studies of companies navigating these issues, fostering critical thinking and problem-solving skills while understanding the positive impact that responsible businesses can have on society and the environment. Another critical aspect we teach our students is the importance of implementing business solutions at scale and internationally, which is vital if we want to make headway on achieving SDG targets.

INSEAD is proud to have over 90 different nationalities in our current MBA cohorts. Our diverse student body lends a holistic and international perspective to discussions around the SDGs and prevents students from viewing these challenges in isolation. Recognising the challenges faced by people around the world cultivates a sense of shared humanity and a shared responsibility for collective action. This creates a mindset of ethical leadership, which is crucial for businesses operating in a globalised and interconnected world.

Fostering an entrepreneurial spirit

As someone whose academic work has revolved around innovation and entrepreneurship, I strongly believe that you need an entrepreneurial mindset to effect meaningful change. Many of the solutions we need to meet the aims of the SDGs do not currently exist, or are in the research labs of universities. For the world to make real progress towards SDG targets, it will require motivated, purpose-driven entrepreneurs to devise and scale innovative solutions.

The root of entrepreneurship is creative destruction, and this is especially critical when it comes to sustainability. We need to dismantle old ways of thinking, experiment with new solutions and embrace new ways of working and producing – we need regeneration and justice.

There exists an amazing opportunity for sustainable transformation in the entrepreneurial space. And it is important for business schools to equip their students with the tools, knowledge and confidence for them to hone an action-oriented, entrepreneurial capacity and move those solutions forward.

To do so, business schools can guide students to approach sustainability from the perspectives of alignment and opportunity, rather than through the narrow lens of trade-offs, while considering the triple bottom line: people, profit and the planet. Developing a business orientation allows students to be sensitive to the issue of scaling – the need to create solutions that can be implemented on a global level.

A key player in fostering an entrepreneurial, sustainability-driven ecosystem at INSEAD is the Rudolf and Valeria Maag INSEAD Centre for Entrepreneurship. Our Hans H. Wahl Impact Entrepreneurship Programme helps impact entrepreneurs build connections among stakeholders and attract the investors required to scale and maximise impact. MBA students can participate in summer start-up tours, where they visit entrepreneurial hubs and gain insights into the start-up ecosystem. And we have a long-standing partnership with the Cartier Women’s Initiative to help raise the profiles of women entrepreneurs, including those working on sustainability-related ventures.

Many of our alumni have gone on to establish companies that address pressing sustainability challenges, including sustainability ratings start-up EcoVadis, carpooling platform BlaBlaCar and ocean carbon capture and storage venture PRONOE. We also sponsored several start-ups – such as e-scooter and e-bike company Cyclecure, food tech venture Fabumin and healthcare organisation HealthSetGo – to showcase their solutions at ChangeNOW.

Our sustainability efforts are underscored by the Hoffmann Institute, which drives the integration of the SDGs throughout the school and is an integral part of our effort to be at the forefront of sustainability.

The key role of business schools

At INSEAD, we want to equip our students with the knowledge about sustainability issues, entrepreneurial mindset and tools to design globally scalable solutions – all of which will be necessary as we strive to create a more sustainable future.

By bringing together diverse individuals and providing them with the environment, experience, skills and support to make a real and lasting impact in the entrepreneurial space, business schools can empower them to become responsible leaders that will transform business, society and the planet for the better.

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Read the full version of this article on INSEAD Knowledge to discover more about the role of business schools in nurturing sustainability-focused entrepreneurs.

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