Environmental Innovation and Entrepreneurship

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This course will equip students to think critically about the forces that shape innovation and entrepreneurial change, and how they factor into the possible trajectories to a low-carbon future. We will conceptualize ventures such as Tesla, Orsted, and Beyond Meat. Are they mirages, isolated exceptions, or the vanguard of low-carbon enterprises that will outcompete carbon-intensive incumbents? In preparation, we will familiarize ourselves with the conditions that bulwark the status quo - such as economic lock-in, policy inertia, and cultural norms - and the ways innovators contend with them. Are there patterns that this dynamic takes on, some in which new paradigms gain momentum and others in which business-as-usual prevails?