IMD has joined forces with seven other leading European business schools to address the climate crisis and support business leaders by providing them with the tools to tackle the climate emergency.
Business Schools for Climate Leadership (BS4CL.org) is a unique alliance of business academic thought leaders, made up of founding members IMD, Cambridge Judge Business School, HEC Paris, IE Business School, IESE Business School, INSEAD, London Business School and Oxford Saïd Business School. Collectively, these institutions train more than 55,000 students and executives per year and are stewards of alumni bodies in excess of 400,000 people.
As agents of change and the catalysts for thought leadership in tomorrow’s business leaders, the founding members of BS4CL recognize their role in driving and accelerating business activities towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Their goal is to collaborate on research to identify and shape best practices, and work across industries to accelerate the business community’s response to climate change. Collectively they will raise awareness of the urgency for climate change mitigation and adaptation, seeking to have an impact through joint outreach to all eight alumni communities.
As a first step, academics from the eight founding schools worked together to produce a BS4CL climate leadership toolkit, which will be released at COP26 in Glasgow on 10 November.
“As educators and researchers as well as stewards of powerful alumni bodies, we need to work together to protect humanity. The lessons in the toolkit will arm executives with the skills and questions to take bold action not only to mitigate the effects of climate change but also to understand the business risks and seize the opportunities ahead.
“Tackling the climate crisis can’t be done alone. This is why we are working together. Climate leadership to the power of eight,” said IMD’s President Jean-François Manzoni.
As attention around the world turns to COP26, the group also held a series of webinars to showcase the content of the toolkit, where each session had participants from multiple schools. The webinars and the toolkit are accessible at BS4CL.org. This initial collaboration focuses on eight topics:
- Climate Change and Inequality (INSEAD)
- Decarbonising Business (HEC Paris)
- Global Strategy in a World Transformed: business strategy and geopolitics (IESE Business School)
- Technology and Innovation as a Climate Change Solution (IE Business School)
- Business Transformation and Climate Change ( IMD
- Risk management and the green energy transition (Oxford Saïd)
- Climate change and nature, what business needs to know (Cambridge Judge)
- Climate Standards and Enterprise Value (London Business School)
The toolkit will be launched on 10 November at the Sustainable Innovation Forum hosted by Climate Action on the Scottish Event Campus (SEC) at the UN Climate Change Conference COP 26 in Glasgow, in partnership with InTent.
The group intends to continue its collaboration after COP26 by bringing together their collective faculties to share and develop new insights on the rapidly evolving and urgent climate agenda.
