Innovation for Climate and Sustainability

Course Description

The challenges of addressing climate change and sustainability require urgency as well as innovative solutions. Startups operate with speed and urgency, 24/7. In recent years they have learned not only how to effectively innovate but also how to be extremely efficient with resources and time, using lean startup methods. Participants in this class develop the skills required of a mission driven entrepreneur by tackling a critical problem in climate and sustainability as part of a team of engineers, scientists, social scientists, MBAs, and law and policy experts. Teams will engage pressing climate and sustainability problems and learn how to apply lean startup principles ("business model canvas," "customer development," and "agile engineering") in developing solutions. Students will take a hands-on, experiential approach to explore options for solutions and needs for stakeholders. The process of exploring options will require participants to engage deeply and to learn how to work closely with policy makers, technologists, government officials, NGOs, foundations, companies, and others interested in solving these problems, while demanding that teams continually build iterative prototypes to test their understanding of the problem and solution hypotheses. For more information on problems and sponsors as they are added and to apply for the course, see https://h4cs.stanford.edu/. Applications required in November. Limited enrollment.https://earth.stanford.edu/esys/resources/program-forms-guides