The Green Business and Sustainable Development School—A Case Study for an Innovative Educational Concept to Prevent Big Ideas from Failure

Jan Nicolai Hennemann, Bernd Draser and Katarina Repkova Stofkova
Additional contact information
Jan Nicolai Hennemann: Department of Communication, University of Zilina, Sweco GmbH, Graeffstr. 5, 50823 Cologne, Germany
Bernd Draser: Ecosign, Akademie für Gestaltung, Vogelsangerstr. 250, 50825 Cologne, Germany
Katarina Repkova Stofkova: Department of Communication, University of Zilina, Univerzitná 1, 01026 Žilina, Slovakia

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 4, 1-15

Abstract: This article addresses the question of why initiatives in the field of green business and sustainable development often fail. Therefore, it dismantles some typical patterns of failure and shows—as a case study—how these patterns can be challenged through an innovative educational concept: the green business and sustainable development school. The applied methodology is a real-life project that is designed through methodological elements stemming from business model canvas, theory U, stakeholder participation, and design thinking. The results of the school initiative are discussed and evaluated by four distinctive stakeholder groups and the school’s supporting potential to overcome typical patterns of failure in the green business and sustainable development arena by the younger generation in the future is outlined. This article concludes with ideas to enhance the school concept to reach even more stakeholder-groups and increase its reliability and viability.

Keywords: educational concept; green business school; “new green deal”; “European green deal”; interdisciplinary capacity and movement building; green failure; young generation collaboration network; prevent big ideas from failure; theory U; science and action-based research; design thinking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/4/1943/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/4/1943/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:4:p:1943-:d:497702

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().