The INGENIUM Alliance, dedicated to promote actions towards the challenges related to environmental and societal issues, organizes the INGENIUM Sustainable Development and Corporate Responsibility School during 18-22 November 2024 in Heraklion, Crete.

The Background of the School:

Given the growing global challenges related to environmental and societal issues calling for urgent transitions, leaders of public and private organizations need to:

  • Be able to cope with previously unseen complexities uncertainties.
  • Lead with empathy and emotional intelligence.
  • Foster diversity and inclusion through deeper levels of socio-cultural awareness.

These issues emphasize the rising needs:

1.To replace previously single-discipline approaches with multidisciplinary approaches, under the prism of sustainability and regeneration, with challenging viewpoints.

2.To equip the next generation of scientists and practitioners with the cutting-edge research and training needed to drive change towards sustainable development.

Moreover, it is evident that the shift to sustainable development requires the reformulation of relationships between business, society and nature. In this context, business is both a cause of, but also a solution to, many of the interconnected problems we face. Hence, business is expected to play a core role in achieving the transition to sustainable development.

The Purpose of the School:

The purpose of the proposed INGENIUM School is grounded on the fundamental current challenge: How to materialize the transition to an environmentally and socially sustainable economic model?

The proposed INGENIUM School will aim to address this challenge through multidisciplinary scientific lenses from the three pillars of sustainable development: environment – society – economy.

The proposed School aims to help PhD and MSc students:

  • To develop a critical understanding of the nature, drivers and trajectories of sustainable development.
  • To examine the role of business and its relationship to environmental, societal and development challenges.
  • To learn how to address complex uncertainties, lead with empathy and social intelligence, as well as how to foster diversity and inclusion, in a “shared value” context.
  • To integrate and apply their interdisciplinary knowledge, advanced methodological skills and science-policy-enterprise links to foster innovation and scalable progress toward sustainable development.

Topics of the School:

  1. The evolving role of business in society and their responsibilities towards sustainable development.
  2. The “Business as usual” context, its impacts, and the rise of “shared value”.
  3. Innovation capabilities towards sustainable development.
  4. Inclusive value chains.