Tag Archives: climate change

Trond Undheim: Strategy failure in cleantech

MIT Sloan Sr. Lecturer Trond Undheim

MIT Sloan Sr. Lecturer Trond Undheim

Cleantech has seen its share of high profile failures over the past year.  The bankruptcy of solar cell company Solyndra has been the most public, but there are many others. This has led many to say that the sector is immature, others to say it is doomed or plagued by fickle or unstable state subsidies. It is also true that quite often, Cleantech firms bank on (somebody) introducing changes in infrastructure that need significant momentum (and time) to take hold. But surely Cleantech CEOs are smart people, so the reason they fail must be slightly more complex, perhaps? And is it even so certain that the problem lies with the industry itself and not with other factors? Is failure, in fact, quite evenly distributed across sectors? You may have noticed that strategies sometimes fail. Some would say strategies mostly fail. I know from my own life that intent does not always translate to result. The question is why.Jim Collins, in his book Why The Mighty Fail (2009), believes failures have a 5 stage lifecycle: hubris of success, pursuit of more, denial of risk, grasping at straws, and capitulation. Does his framework apply equally well across all industries? Is it fully relevant to cleantech?

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Thomas Malone: Collective intelligence to address climate change — finalists chosen in world-wide contest

It’s been over a year since we launched the Climate CoLab and held our first world-wide contest. Our goal was to create a site to harness the ideas and knowledge of thousands of people to find real solutions to climate change. Inspired by systems like Wikipedia and Linux, we wanted to collect the best collective intelligence to come up with proposals for what can be done about this problem.

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MIT and the US Navy team up on alternative energy

From WGBH Greater Boston, September 29, 2011

The world’s largest Navy is going green. The United States Navy and the MIT Sloan School of Management have teamed up in an effort to help wean the Navy off petroleum. Emily Rooney interviews US Navy Energy Security Analyst and MIT EMBA Lt. Damian Blazy and Jonathan Lehrich, MIT EMBA Program Director.

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MIT Sloan economist on "Pain at the Pump"

MIT Sloan Prof. Christopher Knittel

My latest research* looks at how consumers adjust to high gas prices by changing the kinds of car they buy, and the prices they pay. What launched this research was the debate around the effectiveness of a gas tax to reduce climate change; the goal was to determine whether consumers undervalue fuel economy. If consumers do undervalue fuel economy, then such a tax would not shift enough consumers to buy smaller, more fuel-efficient automobiles.

 I try to do my research with an eye toward showing policymakers what will happen if they adopt Policy X over Policy Y. I am not a granola environmentalist, but I do see a lot of inefficient policies out there, and as an economist that’s frustrating.

And here’s the thing…

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Earth Day summit at MIT: Stonyfield Farm's Gary Hirschberg wants edible cup

At MIT’s recent Sustainability Summit, held on Earth Day, close to 250 students, faculty and practitioners gathered from as close as Cambridge and as far away as Morocco. With the theme, “Mens et Manus: Bridging Thought and Action,” our event covered a wide range of issues such as reviving New England’s fishing economy, the water cost curve, building a regional food system, and the economic case for sustainability.

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