TEACH
Climate & Earth
All students in our flagship degree programs are exposed to key sustainability challenges to design business strategies that are in line with planetary boundaries.
In our programs, students reflect on their own environmental footprints and learn how to integrate SDGs into business with the objective to improve the triple bottom line of profit, people, and planet.
Innovative teaching is also at the heart of our approach: we explore a range of complementary, theoretical and practical approaches via case studies, experiential learning and more.
Below is a selection of the main programs, tracks and specializations covering the topics of business and climate change and ecological transition.
Master in Management - Grande Ecole Programs
Students entering HEC take our 200-hour mandatory course in Purpose & Sustainability throughout their school curriculum, including 100 hours on the theme of purpose and 100 hours on sustainability.
A 18h course to understand the ecological transition, starting by deepening scientific knowledge and understanding intricacies between climate change, biodiversity collapse, natural resources depletion and their impact on human societies. The second part of the course details strategies businesses can adopt to be part of the solution to transform the economy and to mitigate climate change.
3 week-program every year in January open to all 1st & 2nd year HEC students to dive with professionals in practical implementation on specific topics :
- Biodiversity: to acquire basic scientific knowledge around biodiversity (natural capital, ecosystems …), understand the dynamics of biodiversity collapse and its implications on our existence. This academy also entails experiential learning as students evaluate and analyse biodiversity on the field and discover existing restauration and preservation initiatives.
- Circular Economy: to understand the meaning and stakes of circular economy, meet with various actors on the field to discover some tools and process when adopting a circular economy approach and see how it can be used by public authorities when managing transition at local territory levels.
A rich and diverse portfolio of 18-hours electives open to all second year HEC students to learn from academics and professionals about issues & solutions related to sustainability and environmental issues:
- Biodiversity: to acquire basic scientific knowledge around biodiversity (natural capital, ecosystems …), understand the dynamics of biodiversity collapse and its implications on our existence. It also entails experiential learning as students evaluate and analyse biodiversity on the field and discover existing restauration and preservation initiatives
- Corporate Ecology: to get familiar with some environmental impact evaluation tools (carbon footprint, product life cycle analysis, CARE accounting) that help decision makers analysing and monitoring company results when driving their organization through ecological transition.
- Democracy and Ecology: to articulate the link between economy, law, science, and geopolitics to better understand the scope and variety of issues when dealing with ecology and the difficulty to overcome complexities when getting to action.
- Environmental Governance: to critically analyze environmental policy approaches in both the public and private sector, understand the basic science underpinning major environmental problems, the concepts developed in environmental policy to create effective and equitable measures, and the main institutions that have been built to address them.
- Financing a low carbon economy: to help students build a common understanding of the required sustainability transformation of each key industry and how to finance it. The teaching methodology is based on business cases prepared by the students and on return on experience shared by professionals from the finance and various industry sectors.
- Sustainable Finance: to understand the principles of sustainable finance, and how they are implemented in the various parts of the financial world (lending, investment banking, asset management & market activities, private equity). This course also provides a “real world” perspective on this fast-evolving industry by going deeper into some key products and markets (e.g. green bonds, ESG investing).
Master in Management - Specializations
Climate & Business Certificate
Energy & Finance Certificate
Master in Sustainability and Social Innovation
Enormous challenges and deep transformations such as global warming, changing global powers, resource depletion and technological disruptions are shaping what businesses can and cannot do. As a result, developing radically innovative, sustainable and impactful business models is becoming an increasingly central preoccupation for executives whose expertise in sustainability is more and more valued by firms.
The Sustainable and Disruptive Innovation Specialization addresses this preoccupation. It empowers students to become a game-changer by providing the tools and the mindset to implement changes in business and innovation.
The CDL is a seed-stage program where MBA students have the opportunity to work as a consultant for one of the climate-orientated startups in CDL-Paris. It focuses on innovation areas such as renewable/alternative energy, power storage, infrastructure, transportation, carbon/methane sequestration, select water, ocean and food initiatives aligned with climate solutions, and geo-engineering. The stream operates from CDL-Paris (HEC Paris) and CDL-West (Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia).
For the nine months of the program, students gain first-hand experience in all aspects involved in founding a company innovation and benefit from close interactions with real, early-stage technology ventures and potential investors.
This 2 Week-custom course (one in Doha, one in Berlin) enables you to fine-tune your analytical and decision-making skills while expanding your industry network to adopt visionary strategies for the current energy revolution.
A 3-day intensive course to help decison makers understanding the issues at stake when measuring the firm’s carbon footprint and providing actionable tools to effectively implement a successful decarbonization strategy, whatever the industry and the size of the company.
Acting on climate change is not only part of corporate social responsibility, but rather a question of survival and the move to a carbon sober firm goes far beyond mere energy efficiency or the use of renewable energies: it implies a complete reinvention of a firm’s business model, such as for example circular economy that saves non-renewable resources.
HEC Summer School offers diverse, intensive one to two-week programs for young professionals and students who wish to develop their interpersonal skills or refine their expertise in cutting-edge domains.
Business and Climate Change: a forward-looking program to acquire a good command of sustainable issues, climate and energy policies as well as geopolitics of climate and resources. Participants get an in-depth understanding of how corporations are all affected by climate change and how their access to capital markets and their ratings are being impacted and challenged by new energy business models and socio-economic shifts.
Executive Education Programs
Lifelong Learning for professionals and companies to have an impact and to help transforming organizations for an environmentally sustainable future.
Executive Education Programs
Executive Certificate Strategizing sustainable business transformation
Executive Certificate Piloter la transformation vers le développement durable
