Session A -Thinking Creatively about Sustainable Business with Piers Ibbotson - 3.003 Create Space, WBS

Building sustainable business requires a transformation of the way we think, work and act. This session is an opportunity to think creatively about the challenges of building a sustainable future.

The workshop will take place in Warwick Business School’s purpose-built drama studio (3.003- Create Space) where we will use techniques and approaches from the creative arts to explore strategies for bringing about change. We will reflect on the blocks and barriers that we experience as individuals and in our organisations when attempting to bring about a sustainable future and learn techniques that will enable us to reframe these resistances as creative opportunities. We will experience the way in which artists use the constraints they encounter to stimulate creative thinking and develop innovative solutions to complex problems.

The session will draw on the work of Brazilian theatre director Augusto Boal who pioneered a sophisticated process for applying artistic methods to solving real world problems.

 

Piers Ibbotson Associate Professor: Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Warwick Business School

I am interested in what the performing arts can teach us about the moment to moment management of ourselves and others in the workplace. I teach on the Distance Learning MBA, Exec MBA and Executive Education Leadership Diploma for WBS. I have a particular interest in creative leadership, leading for innovation, and small group interactions. In 1996 I set up my own training and development consultancy and became a regular contributor to senior management programmes in the UK and around the world, introducing leaders and senior managers to concepts and techniques from the creative arts. I was a regular contributor to courses at the London Business School, Said Business School, Copenhagen BS, Hult/Ashridge, University of Aarhus, the Banff Centre, Canada and others, before coming to University of Warwick in 2015. Prior to this, I had a successful career in the performing arts and was an actor and Assistant Director with the Royal Shakespeare Company for many years, working alongside some of the best directing talent in the British theatre.

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Session B – Managing Sustainable Energy Transitions – Simulation with Professor Michael Bradshaw - Space 10, Scarman

This interactive session to explore challenges associated with transforming the global energy system to meet the Paris Agreement. After a short introduction, you will be working in groups using the En-Roads Climate Solutions Simulator to produce your own energy scenario and answer a set of questions. Each group will then present their findings, providing the basis for a discussion of the challenges associated with managing sustainable energy transitions.

Resources

An online Task Guide to be read and acted on (visit the En-Road website and watch a short video) ahead of the session.

A Power Point template to be used to present your energy and climate solution to the group.

 

Professor Michael Bradshaw Professor of Global Energy. Warwick Business School

Prof. Bradshaw's academic background is in human geography. He competed his undergraduate training at the University of Birmingham (BSc) and he has an MA from the University of Calgary (Alberta) and he gained his PhD at the University of British Columbia. He works at the interface between economic and political geography, business and management and international relations. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (and past Vice President) and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

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Session C - Sustainable Customer Behaviour with Professor Hugh Wilson - Space 11, Scarman

Every organisation has social and environmental sustainability objectives nowadays – from corporates and NGOs to public-sector bodies and business schools. And some of that is about putting our own house in order – as the walking tour before this session shows. But to achieve our objectives we also need the help of our ‘customers’ (from students to faculty!). If we develop a great sustainable product, for example, we need our customers to buy it, and use it correctly. Based on Warwick’s research with firms such as Unilever, this workshop will show you a simple framework for nudging customer behaviour, and give you a chance to try brainstorming in groups on a behaviour-change challenge you’re interested in.

 

Professor Hugh Wilson Professor of Marketing. Warwick Business School

Hugh Wilson is Professor of Marketing at WBS. After degrees in mathematics at Oxford and computer science at Cambridge, he spent some years in the tech industry with IBM and Xerox, among others. He now teaches and researches on sustainability marketing, B2B relationships and customer experience management, and works on these issues with companies such as Unilever, Nestlé, Pfizer and Mercedes Benz.

Hugh writes for the top marketing journals such as Journal of Marketing and Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. He writes equally for practitioners, contributing regularly to Harvard Business Review. His books include the bestseller Marketing Plans (8e, with M McDonald).

Hugh initiated a carbon programme in his former university Cranfield, which has reduced the university’s emissions by 40% so far. He co-chairs WBS’s sustainability working group. He and his colleagues ran a session in the COP26 official programme on achieving sustainable system transformations. He is listed in the Chartered Institute of Marketing's "Guru Gallery" of "50 leading marketing thinkers alive in the world today", alongside such names as Bill Gates. He has also been honoured by Tim Berners-Lee as one of the hundred "Internet Decade" individuals who had most influenced the development of e-commerce.