Sustainable Business Ecosystems

Global Value Chain Partnering on the Sustainability Agenda

The course addresses the question of how to rapidly scale sustainable business by building ecosystems. Participants will be updated on the newest approaches to strategic partnering and ecosystems as tools for business development and scaling in global value chains.

Focus is on building effective ecosystems by developing, organizing, governing, and managing complex strategic partnerships within and across organizational and national borders and is targeted at businesses and other organizations involved in driving the business developments towards a zero-carbon world.

Course content

We build on classical international management and economics theories and tools combined with innovative new developments in global value chain governance research and practice.

The course will present theories of ecosystems, partnering, global value chains, strategic networks, governance, and international strategy in the context of scaling sustainable business.

The course will feature a combination of theoretical models and practical cases and the course participants will have the opportunity to apply the course material directly to their own business case and get feed-back from the teachers and the group.

The course develops a strategic partnering approach to business development with focus on scaling sustainable business across vertical and horizontal value chain activities.

Download the full course description (pdf) on top of the page. 

Key benefits

After completion of the course, you have obtained:

• Overview of theories of strategic partnerships, Ecosystems, global value chains, and international strategic management;
• In depth understanding of Ecosystems and global value chain partnering and how such collaboration can help scale sustainable business of relevance for a zero-carbon world
• Case studies will be presented and analysed based on the theories presented in the course
• Course participants can bring their own company as a case to be analysed and discussed in the course
• Practical frameworks and tools to help identify, organize, and manage strategic partnerships for scaling sustainable business

Learning in the course is based on active engagement with the instructors and other participants. The course is designed around theory-in-practice. Insights from best (and worst) case examples and executives from industry-leading companies allow participants to use own company as case for developing applicable frameworks and tools in pursuit of better strategies for scalable sustainable business.

All course material and teaching is in English.

Participant profile

The course is relevant for managers, consultants, and specialists with an interest in getting theoretical and practical knowledge on how to address the large challenge facing business in their scaling journey towards a sustainable world.