In December 2021, selected students from WU’s SIMC & CEMS master programs presented findings to partner executives as part of the course Strategic Leadership for Sustainable Innovation.

The course focused on analyzing the sustainability strategies of key players in the European energy industry. Equipped with the ESG framework (ESG stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance), students collected secondary data from sustainability reports and developed frameworks to capture the strategic positioning of 34 energy utilities with regard to sustainability. These analyses resulted in concrete recommendations on how to develop and implement a successful sustainability strategy. Moreover, each student developed a “triple layered business model canvas” (TLBMC) around a current product portfolio of a specific incumbent. TLBMC is a tool to support developing, visualizing, and communicating the development of (new) sustainable business models.