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Climate Change: Challenges and Opportunities for Business and Society

David Schmittlein Richard M. Locke PhD '89 John Sterman PhD '82 Vladimir Bulovic Kevin Moss: September 19, 2008; Running Time: 1:33:21

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

If “organizations are the way that ideas change the world,” as MIT Sloan Dean Dave Schmittlein puts it, then look to institutions like MIT, which has wrapped its arms around the issues of energy and climate change, to help make sustainability real and attainable. The Dean describes some showcase work launched at MIT, including a long-lasting battery for electric cars, and MIT’s own green campus efforts.

For MIT Sloan, explains Richard Locke, sustainability is not an “in vogue concept” that is about environment or climate change. Rather, it is “an incredible opportunity for new business, and for existing enterprise to reinvent their practices.” He invites panelists and audience at Convocation sessions to engage in dialog about moving beyond theory to meet the challenges of sustainability.

Forget the notion that the climate challenge is primarily a technical one, and can be solved with the help of 21st century know-how, says John Sterman. A more useful response would combine the distributed leadership of a civil rights movement with the technological daring of a Manhattan project. There are huge obstacles to overcome: According to Sterman, while a vast majority of people have heard of global warming, believe it poses a threat, and believe in reducing greenhouse emissions, a majority also oppose any changes that would “put the true costs of energy in front of you at the pump and in your electric bill.” There’s widespread belief that we can “wait and see” whether climate change is really that bad.

Sterman is working on providing policy makers and the public with interactive models that demonstrate just how immediate the climate threat is and how a slack response will only make things worse. He wants people to perceive that they must reduce greenhouse gases dramatically, but he also wants to destroy the myth that doing so will “kill the economy.” Sterman says “addressing this issue will pay dividends—that if we can cut the use of fossil fuels, it puts money in our pockets.”

Vladimir Bulovic wants to make the climate issue personal and immediate: the arboreal forests of the world produce 2/3rds of the planet’s oxygen, and due to warming (and the diseases that accompany it), trees are dying off. This image of our world choking on its own waste is motivating MIT scientists to find alternatives to polluting energy sources. He cites in particular efforts to harness the sun’s energy, including improving silicon technology, engineering photons to make electricity, and advancing ways of concentrating and storing solar power.

British telecom BT has managed to reduce its carbon footprint by 58% since 1996. Imagine what would happen if other global corporations followed suit, queries
Kevin Moss. He challenges his commercial peers to scour their business processes to reduce real estate and transportation usage, improve energy efficiency (e.g., by raising operating temperatures at data centers), and to purchase renewable energy. BT’s next goal: an 80% reduction of carbon emissions, and to secure 25% of its energy needs by wind energy by 2016.

Lecture Details

Location: Kresge Auditorium

“If we can cut the use of fossil fuels, it puts money in our pockets. ... I believe those folks who say we can’t address the problem, that it’s too expensive, that it will hurt the economy; have a profoundly pessimistic view about human creativity, about our capacity to work together and collectively for the greater good and for future generations.”

John Sterman

About the Speakers

David Schmittlein

John C Head III, Dean, MIT Sloan School of Management

David Schmittlein became dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management in October, 2007. Prior to his appointment at MIT Sloan, Schmittlein served on the faculty at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania from 1980 until 2007. He also served as Interim Dean during July 2007 and as Deputy Dean from 2000-2007. In addition, he was chair of the editorial board for Wharton School Publishing.

Richard M. Locke PhD '89

Alvin J. Siteman Professor of Entrepreneurship and Political Science

Richard M. Locke teaches in both MIT’s Sloan School of Management and the MIT Department of Political Science in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Locke’s research focuses on economic adjustment and development, comparative labor relations and political economy.

Locke is Faculty Director of the MIT Sloan Fellows Program, a mid-career executive education program at the Sloan School of Management He holds a B.A. from Wesleyan University, an M.A in Education from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT.

John Sterman PhD '82

Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management and Engineering Systems
Director, System Dynamics Group, MIT

John D. Sterman's research includes systems thinking and organizational learning, computer simulation of corporate strategy, and the theory of nonlinear dynamics. He is the author of many scholarly and popular articles on the challenges and opportunities facing organizations today, including the book Modeling for Organizational Learning, and the award-winning textbook Business Dynamics.

Sterman's research centers on improving managerial decision making in complex systems. He has pioneered the development of "management flight simulators" of corporate and economic systems.

Sterman has twice been awarded the Jay W. Forrester Prize for the best published work in system dynamics. He won a 2005 IBM Faculty Award, and the 2001 Accenture Award for the best paper of the year published in the California Management Review (with Nelson Repenning). He has five times won awards for teaching excellence from the students of the MIT Sloan School of Management, and was named one of the Sloan School's "Outstanding Faculty" by the 2001 Business Week Guide to the Best Business Schools.

Vladimir Bulovic

KDD Associate Professor of Communications and Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Vladimir Bulovic is a principal investigator in MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics. Bulovic joined the faculty of MIT in 2000 as an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Prior to joining MIT, Bulovic was a Senior Scientist and Project Head of Strategic Technology Development at Universal Display Corporation (UDC). At UDC he worked on the application of organic materials to LEDs for full color flat panel displays and thin film photovoltaics for solar cell and detector applications. Prior to joining UDC he worked in Princeton's POEM Center as a graduate researcher (1993-1998) and research associate (1998-1999).

Bulovic's current research interests include studies of physical properties of organic and organic/inorganic nanodot composite thin films and structures, and development of novel optoelectronic organic and hybrid nano-scale devices.

In 2004, Bulovic was named as one of the TR100, the list of top young innovators in technology named annually by Technology Review magazine. In the same year, he also was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award (PECASE), the nation's highest honor for scientists and engineers at the beginning of their research careers.

He graduated from Princeton University with a B.S.E. (1991), M.A. (1995), and Ph.D. (1998) in Electrical Engineering.