This is a capstone course that will integrate the entirety of the sustainable management business education programme. The Integrative Capstone course provides the platform for students to plan, start and build an ethical, socially responsible, ecologically restorative and profitable venture for a new or existing business, nonprofit, or governmental organization.

The course integrates business strategy and strategic management, leadership and decision science, the functional areas of business (such as accounting, finance, marketing and operations) and examines the principles, frameworks and techniques central to understanding markets, competitive positioning and launching new ventures. Just as important, this course builds on the necessary leadership competencies to support creation, development and evolution of a venture within broad social, economic, ecological and political systems. In this course we explore the following overarching questions:

• What is the problem that needs to be addressed (social, ecological, and/or economic)?

• Who is the customer and what needs do they have?

• What are the different options for designing a venture to address the problem and serve customer needs?

• How can new ventures contribute to transformation of the global business marketplace?

• What are the risks facing the venture idea, how can they be managed so as to marginalize the negative impacts (social, ecological, and/or economic) and maximize the entrepreneurial promise and aspirations of the proposed venture?

• How can a compelling story be created about the offering so that it communicates the promise and aspirations of the proposed venture effectively to intended audiences?

As with the approach in Fall 2010, the emphasis will be to craft a business plan in rapid and holistic fashion based on the model of Problem / Solution / Strategy / Team. Version 1 of the Plan will be developed early then fleshed-out in greater detail via rapid prototyping throughout the rest of the course, incorporating regular feedback from instructors, mentors and your classmates. Students will be able to leverage the expertise of the Instructional staff and a larger group of Faculty mentors, as well as to use external advisors appropriate to their subject area.

The class goal will be to build your leadership, collaborative, and problem solving capacities. There will be an element of competition in the process, as Nature teaches that business plan forms, like the body plan of an organism or the niche an organism occupies within an ecosystem, is often best honed in the crucible of competition. But a deeper goal is to enable you to assemble a variety of collaborative and constructive support networks to help your idea evolve, be challenged and be improved. In that regard, a large portion of the course grade will depend upon each student's level of collaborative engagement. Students are encouraged to use their classmates as "go-to advisors" where there are skills / experience matches.

Through this integrative learning experience, students will review, reflect on and apply MBA skills to the process of creating a Venture. The teaching team and others will be available for assistance through the course. For some students, the venture plan will be a continuation of project work done in other courses. Others may have begun work on the venture idea at earlier course points or selecting to begin again with a new idea.

The final deliverables will be a completed business plan and a public presentation of that plan.

En route, you will:

• solidify your knowledge and experience of financial modeling;

• practice and hone presentation and business writing skills;

• develop a business plan, a strategy, and understand the relationship between them

• practice the skills necessary to convert strategy into action and successful decision-making in the enterprise

• reflect on and discuss key personal qualities important for those who are advancing initiatives: accountability, relationship building, and critical/systemic thinking;

• implement many of the tools learned in your first three semesters.

The mission of this course is to build character in entrepreneurs in service of Nature and Society. The purpose of this course is to further build, integrate and demonstrate your entrepreneurial (and intrapreneurial) capacities to advance your initiatives.

The course will incorporate, but not be exclusively driven by, the fundamental entrepreneurial concepts of: Problem, Solution, Strategy (aka business model,) and Team. This “PSST” concept is applicable across new business ventures, and beyond the world of for-profit businesses. It functions equally well for non-profits and for “intrapreneuring” (change within an organization) efforts as well.

? Problem: What is wrong? What needs changing? What needs are you trying to fill?

? Solution: A new way of seeing, being, or doing that will meet the challenge you have identifi

This course is a continuation of managerial economics, focusing on two additional realms of economics: macroeconomics and ecological economics. Macroeconomics is concerned with the economic aspects associated with national level economic policy and international economic issues, rather than the behavior of households and firms (the realm of microeconomics). Ecological economics is an evolving branch of, or approach to, economics that understands markets in a far more complex, evolving and interrelated manner than traditional economics. It parallels ecology in that it sees elements of the economy as part of an ecosystem rather than as isolated components. This course has two primary objectives: provide an understanding of the central elements of the macroeconomic model and how these elements relate to managerial decision making, and provide an overview of the field of ecological economics and how this field views and illuminates the issue of sustainability.

The course will cover basic macroeconomic topics including determination and uses of GDP and GNP, interest rates, inflation, money supply, unemployment, aggregate demand and supply, the multiplier effect, national savings, balance of trade, exchange rates, budget deficits and national debt, and growth theory. The course will also cover central themes of ecological economics including optimal scale, diminishing marginal returns, throughput and thermodynamics, ends and means, and stock and flow resources, as well as themes from environmental economics such as public goods, externalities, and government involvement in the marketplace.

To integrate the skills and knowledge accumulated over the two years of the Sustainable Management MBA and MPA, students examine and use the principles of sustainability for guiding organizations to a more sustainable future. Calling on the four strands of coursework—numbers, markets, people and sustainability—students explore the step-by-step process for transforming a company or organization, both internally and externally.

This course builds on and completes the learning begun in the Principles of Sustainable Management (SUS 6010) course. It is offered in conjunction with the Capstone course, and provides a supportive environment to students for development of the sustainability component of their Capstone Project.

It also delivers advanced information on implementing sustainability in business and governments. The course uses a variety of tools which enable practitioners to apply the concepts of such leading sustainability frameworks as Natural Capitalism, the Natural Step, and others throughout an organization. They guide the implementation of sustainability strategies into various departments and functions of a company or a community. The course presents a systemic way to drive a commitment to sustainability into a organization’s DNA, from management to communications and marketing to HR to production and operations. It takes a organization through four levels of commitment, from just having been introduced to sustainability to becoming a truly restorative organization.

This course integrates the principles of financial and managerial accounting to prepare the manager to use accounting to assess and manage the health of the organization. Topics include financial statements and their interpretation; the bookkeeping process and transaction analysis; accounting for assets, liabilities, and owners’ equity; cost-volume-profit relationships; budgeting; and internal analysis techniques. The class will also explore environmental, social, and ethical accounting issues, which challenge students to apply existing accounting systems to new settings and critically analyze existing and proposed accounting systems. The goal is not to train students to become accountants, but to equip students to become informed users of financial statement information, to become managers and/or designers of accounting systems that produce relevant information to facilitate corporate and organizational decision-making, and to assure that appropriate information is tracked so managers can make more successful and sustainable decisions.