Today’s economic conditions require a change in perspective to look beyond the current “take, make and dispose” model. How is higher education helping the next generation of business leaders to develop the innovative, systems thinking approaches needed to address today’s rapidly changing business context?
Last week saw Gin Tidridge, sustainability specialist at B&Q, become the first person to complete an MBA in Innovation, Enterprise and Circular Economy at the University of Bradford, the first MBA programme in the world to provide business professionals with the essentials on the circular economy framework.
Gin studied for three years on the fully online course, before being awarded the MBA. She said “It was an honour to achieve a UK and global first. Circular economy – innovation aimed at keeping resources in use for as long as possible and then recovering and regenerating products and materials – is integral to B&Q’s ethos and work.”
Gin’s final management project on her MBA was closely linked to B&Q’s parent company Kingfisher’s exploration into whether a supply chain can be described as “closed loop”. She examined various methodologies to assess circularity and found a solution that would work for B&Q’s wide range of products. Her work will help the business to become more innovative in the way it develops products, services and supply chains in the future.
The University of Bradford School of Management’s MBA in Innovation, Enterprise and Circular Economy provides both academic theory and practical case studies relating to circular economy, tackling subjects such as regenerative product design, new business models, reverse logistics and enabling communication technologies. Professor Peter Hopkinson, director of the MBA programme, sees the course as providing unique opportunities for students to discover circular economy success stories and to identify the business opportunities in their own professional settings.
Other higher education institutions are beginning to recognise the need to integrate circular economy concepts in their curricula across academic disciplines. Starting in January 2017, Cranfield University will run a new executive MSc in Technology, Innovation and Management for a Circular Economy, combining the university’s strengths in technology, management and finance with expertise in engineering, logistics and environmental sciences. Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands has seen more than 16,000 students enrol in its circular economy free online course since it launched in 2015.
Bradford, Cranfield and TU Delft are all members of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Pioneer University network, which supports higher education institutions to embed innovative circular economy-oriented frameworks for thinking into their teaching and research programmes.
The benefits of collaboration with higher education institutions to encourage circular economy thinking are being recognised by business leaders. The Schmidt MacArthur Fellowship – a year-long international programme on circular economy for postgraduate students of design, engineering and business – provides face to face collaboration opportunities for postgraduate students and their academic mentors with business leaders from organisations including Philips, M&S, BAM and IBM. The programme involves 14 participating universities, including Imperial College London, the University of California at Berkeley, and India’s National Institute of Design.
According to Angela Nahikian, director of global sustainability at the US based company Steelcase, “The next generation of business leaders will be challenged by scarcity, out-dated economic systems and a rapidly changing business context. Disrupting the status quo to build appropriate operating models will require a deep understanding of the barriers and opportunities ahead. Programs like the Schmidt MacArthur Fellowship help young professionals develop the skills and strategic perspectives to not only succeed in the future context, but to fundamentally transform it.”
Content on this page is paid for and provided by Philips, sponsor of the circular economy hub
