Speaking sustainability, day 4

We've really hit our stride now at Stanford's Business Strategies for Environmental Sustainability program.

We've had 3 days of classes, including the challenging business school round table format, where we students engage heavily in discussing each "case" and shaping the conclusions.

We played a little game on the Prisoners dilemma, which demonstrates the difficulty in building collective action when each individual profits most from being a selfish actor. In an interesting version of the game, we demonstrated a good model of collective action.

We also explored some interesting cases of NGOs and businesses trying to build a better future, and analyzed what worked, what didn't work, and why.

It's interesting and a bit of a duh to realize that the problems I face in my work are not unique. Of course they're not unique. And...smart people have spent a lot of time and energy thinking about the types of problems that I'm working on. Yes, I can benefit from learning more about how other people have solved similar problems, and the lessons learned from successful and failed attempts.

I'm finding some good validation of the work I'm engaged in, and tons of food for thought in doing the work better. I think it's going to take a long time to chew through and digest all of the lessons.

Remind me why I don't do this kind of training and education more often, it feels really valuable. Stanford is to be commended for creating this course. I hope for future success for some of their other creative enterprises.

Tweet