BEI5810 Sustainable business and innovation

Global sustainability challenges such as climate change, widening inequality, food insecurity, and ecosystems decline are creating greater levels of complexity and risk for business strategy and operations. Evolving legislative, regulatory, investor and societal trends are pushing business to do better by addressing associated environmental, societal, governance and ethical impacts. Failure to respond can lead to significant financial, policy, competitor, investor, and reputational risk. Consequently, business is needing to rethink sustainability value creation in radically different ways. The unit integrates insights from sustainable development, business management, business innovation, environmental and social sciences and systems thinking. Learners will demonstrate broad knowledge of global sustainable development challenges; critique current incremental sustainable business responses and approaches; interrogate systems focused frameworks and sustainable business models; and apply transformative tools to a real business. Learners will develop and demonstrate their employability-readiness through the application of new knowledge and skills to real-world challenges including: systems thinking; strategic sustainability analysis; research and evaluation; critical thinking and reflection; intercultural and interdisciplinary understanding; professional communication and teamwork.