Author: si-mba

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Four Clever Ways Packaging Changes Can Help Companies Can Reduce Their Carbon Footprint

This post was written by Kathrin Kaiser ’18

Sixty-three pounds of plastic, per person, ends up in landfills in the United States. An increased consumer demand for sustainability and the amount of waste coming from disposing packaging makes companies re-think their packaging. They start to incorporate new, sustainable materials and construction methods into their packaging to reduce their impact on the planet. Here’s four clever ideas for companies to reduce their carbon footprint by changing their packaging:

  • Reducing the ink in company logos

Big brands like McDonald’s or Starbucks might be able to save millions of dollars every year and help preserve the planet just by slightly changing their logos. “Ecobranding” is a project by Sylvain Boyer, a French graphic designer, where he demonstrates the impact of this slight change. A simplified version of the logos could save companies 10-39% in ink and result in additional secondary benefits, such as reduced printing costs and a cut in energy consumption.

  • Arekapak

That certain uses of plastic are “evil” is no longer news, not only to environmentalists but also to large corporations. But just banning plastic bags at the register might not be good enough – vegetables and fruits are often shrink-wrapped in plastic, causing tons of landfill. Especially the food industry could benefit from the idea of two female innovators: Arekapak. It is a food packaging alternative, made out of palm leafs and produced with very few water and completely without chemicals. The product is also compostable, heat- and cold-resistant and has a water-resistant surface. And like that wasn’t enough good news, Arekapak packaging serves as a dinner plate, too.

  • Edible Packaging

What if you could eat the packaging off your food instead of sending it to a thousand years of landfill doom? An Indonesia-based start-up called Evoware has developed just that. Evoware is a biodegradable, dissolvable, edible packaging wrap made out of seaweed (which is also packed with vitamins!). The company plans to create several variations of the product for instant coffee, sugar and seasonings – the packaging can then just be dumped into the hot water and dissolves. Another upside is that this product could help seaweed farmers raising their revenue and do something good for the environment: seaweed absorbs a great deal of the carbon dioxide in the sea!

  • Just eliminate packaging completely

“Original Unverpackt” (“original unpacked”) is a Berlin-based supermarket that works without food packaging. Customers just bring their own containers and have those weighed – they only take what they need and the weight of the containers is being subtracted at the register. The entrepreneurial founder- duo wants to reply to the rising demand for more sustainable products and services and alternatives to the “lavish” handling of resources. Similar concepts exist in Austin, Texas (In.Gredients) and London (Unpackaged). Furthermore, Original Unverpackt hopes to make organic food more affordable for people with lower incomes because of the removal of packaging.

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For Leaders, Feedback Is The Breakfast of Champions

This post was written by Liz Ford ’18

Feedback is the breakfast of champions. Feedback is a gift. Without feedback, leaders are cut off from the lifeblood of an organization and their ideas and abilities will wither and die. These are the words of Joe Fusco, Chair of The Sustainable Innovation MBA Advisory Board and leadership coach to our cohort.

Every other week we meet with Joe for the program’s Leadership Seminar, and even though it’s an optional supplement to our other rigorous coursework, everyone shows up ready to listen.

We spend a lot of time in the program filling our minds with financial equations, S.W.O.T. analyses and Organizational Behavior terminology – preparing to be the executives of the organizations of tomorrow. The leadership seminar is different: Joe helps us go beyond our textbooks to look at what true leadership really means.

Joe helps us to examine what our heads, hearts and hands are doing on a daily basis and how these cognitive, emotional and physical practices and abilities are impacting others. Impact is the key. It doesn’t matter our intentions: what matters is the effect that our actions have on others.

The best way to assess our impact is to be open to receiving feedback. Feedback allows us to see the difference between our intents and impacts, and work on closing the gap.

However, being open to feedback isn’t easy and it means addressing the natural — and sometimes quite strong — defensiveness that can pop up when hearing things about ourselves that don’t jibe with our own internal assessments.

Leadership Seminar has no grades and no required homework, which makes what we volunteered to do for Joe even more striking. He challenged us to complete two difficult assignments. One: come up with a list of 25 strengths and 25 weaknesses that we bring to the table as leaders. Two: ask someone who knows us well to create the same list for us, and then sit with them while they read it out loud.

The impact? As scary as this assignment seemed, it made each and every one us more receptive to learning about the behaviors and skills we need to work on in order to become more effective leaders. This lies at the heart of what we all came to The Sustainable Innovation MBA to learn.

Wake up every morning and get hungry for a big bowl of feedback, folks. It’s the breakfast of champions.

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Reflections: Spring Break Edition

This post was written by Michael Krulin ’18. Students will be enjoying the rest and renewal of Spring Break from March 12 to March 16.

As the Class of 2018 is in the homestretch of The Sustainable Innovation MBA experience and most of us are eyeing the start of our welcome spring break, I can’t help but reflect on the program thus far and try to leave some insights for next year’s cohort.

Let it Settle

The opportunity that comes with a one-year program is that there is going to be more information coming at you then you can take in. There is a purposeful design to push the limits of the students in both materials covered and mental strain that comes with trying to fit more into a day than seems possible.  Allow yourself the space to be ok with not getting it all the first time through. You will be amazed at how it will tend to bubble back up and come back to you when you are ready.

Holding Space

To say that you will have emotions about the program is an understatement. What I have come to realize is that allowing myself to feel overwhelmed, frustrated, enlightened, or confused was part of my process figuring out my way of dealing with all the highs and lows of the program. You or one of you teammates is going to have an off day or two. My recommendation is to recognize where you are on that day, allow yourself the space to be with that emotion or feeling, and in doing so, you give validity to that emotion. Taking time at the beginning of the day to check in with yourself and go over the head, heart, and hands that represent your mental state, emotional state, and physical state will at the very least inform you of where you are starting the day.

Be Active

This one seems so obvious but when you start to have those long weeks and it never feels like there is enough time to do everything, make sure that you are getting into whatever activity you need. Move your body to allow your mind some time to absorb the information you have received that day.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Walter Isaacson’s biography about Albert Einstein:

“A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way,” Einstein once said, “but intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience.”

Allow yourself the time and space to have the new information mix with what you are bringing to the program and allow the creative process to happen.  

Good luck, it’s going to be great!

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The Business of Health Care Delivery: The Social Determinants of Health

This post was written by Gregory Paylor ’18

In the US, health insurance coverage was broadened and expanded under The Affordable Care Act.  While this reduced the total uninsured population, cost per unit of care went unaddressed and the model of healthcare delivery has remained largely unchanged.  Only recently have we begun to see payment model initiatives attempting to address healthcare payment reform and improvement to patient outcomes.  Because of this, insurers have been looking for other ways to reduce downstream healthcare spending.  This is where the Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) come into play.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines SDOH as “the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age. These circumstances are shaped by the distribution of money, power and resources at global, national and local levels. The social determinants of health are mostly responsible for health inequities – the unfair and avoidable differences in health status seen within and between countries.”  Examples of SDOH include: safe housing, food availability, segregation, exposure to crime, presence of trash, transportation options, and the natural environment.

Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Utah, and Vermont are all “testing strategies not only to link Medicaid and social services, but also to use Medicaid funds to actually deliver supportive services that affect social determinants of health. These value-based delivery system reforms include the creation of accountable care organizations, health homes, community health teams, and accountable communities for health.”

Rather than waiting for patients to come into the ER or be seen when a problem manifests, developing a network of community partners to proactively engage healthcare consumers is a preventative strategy that is important to take note of.  Insurers are making a point to positively influence the social conditions of its members as a way to save money on medical bills that could potentially occur.  This type of upfront investment has the potential to bring down healthcare spending while improving the health of underserved and vulnerable patient populations.   

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Getting to Know the Class of 2018: Sarah Healey

Sarah Healey ’18 comes to The Sustainable Innovation MBA after a career in retail management. She was interviewed by Isabel Russell, an undergraduate at UVM.

Why did you choose to attend The Sustainable Innovation MBA program?

I chose to attend The Sustainable Innovation MBA program because I wanted to gain the skills necessary to have a productive role in my family’s business. The program drew my attention because of its small size and focus on sustainability and entrepreneurship.

What has been your favorite part/element of the program thus far?

My favorite element is the cohort itself. I really enjoy getting to spend five days a week in class with people who have similar interests to me. I feel like the cohort really allows you to develop strong relationships.

What are three things someone considering the program should be aware of?

1) it is very accelerated! but definitely doable. 2) there are so many support systems in place to help you through the challenging parts of the program. 3) Even when it is busy it is so much fun.

How has The Sustainable Innovation MBA helped you?

The program has helped me in ways I never imagined. It has greatly improved my emotional intelligence and provided me the toolkit to continue to improve  into the future.

 

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“The bloodless logic of the marketplace…”

This article from Politico Magazine highlights how the things we should be doing from an environmental and climate change point of view are becoming more economical (although unevenly), and that it’s the quiet power of economics and business that are driving change rather than politics and public policy alone.

This is a core belief behind The Sustainable Innovation MBA: capitalism, disrupted and reinvented, is a force — along with many others — to solve one of the world’s most pressing problems. We must develop a new generation of business leaders who will build, innovate, disrupt, and reinvent climate change-focused enterprises in a world that demands it. In other words, UVM’s Sustainable Innovation MBA is part of the solution and is more important than ever and its graduates increasingly more vital to sustainable businesses.

As they say, read the whole thing:

My Life In The Elusive Green Economy

 

(illustration: Politico)

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Networking: A Cliché? Or, A Lesson?

This post was written by Andria Denome ’18

“Whatever lazy or narcissistic things you’ve been hearing about today’s Millennials, that’s not Andria” is what Jocelyn said in her introduction of me to Dennis DeLeo.

Dennis, affectionately known throughout Rochester, NY as Denny, is the co-founder of Trillium Group Venture Capital and Private Equity and more recently of the Venture Jobs Foundation. Trillium was the first VC firm in Rochester, born after Denny and a Kodak colleague saw an unmet need. Venture Jobs Foundation (VJF) emerged in a similar way after Denny saw that the poorest neighborhoods in Rochester were teeming with the entrepreneurial spirit to revitalize the community but they lacked capital. VJF is an impact investing organization with the mission of bringing jobs and resources to low income neighborhoods via small business.

I read about Denny in several articles and I knew that it would be amazing to learn more about his career and leadership path. Plus, conducting informational interviews is a requirement for The Sustainable Innovation MBA Career Launch curriculum and I had a looming deadline.

Although we are constantly barraged with pro-networking encouragement at the Grossman School of Business, I struggle to conceptualize its impact. Coming into the program directly out of undergraduate studies, I have never really been in the job market with that extra level of pressure. What’s even harder is asking my mom to connect me with her friend, Jocelyn, to connect me with a very accomplished VC that she went to Harvard with decades ago, with whom she may or may not keep in touch, just for the opportunity to chat, on the outside-chance he would be willing to share his hard-won experience.

I was skeptical, but that is exactly what I did. The result was a flood of support, advice and praise. Jocelyn’s warm introduction really tipped the scales in my favor, as Denny said, “I know Jocelyn very well and I know she would not send a student my way if they weren’t promising.” I have a new appreciation for networking and the utilization of my close network.

Below are some of the key points from my conversation with Denny.

  • Were did vision for VJF come from? What is the Foundation working on now?

VJF is only five years old but they are already added many programs to boost the Rochester economy, specifically in disadvantaged neighborhoods. They have created two programs to plant and nurture the seeds of entrepreneurship earlier than the micro-lending level via a pipeline program. First, they created Jobs Kitchen which is a business accelerator program that local entrepreneurs can apply to join. From there Denny and his team thought, “what else can we do to jumpstart entrepreneurship?” and the answer was Jobs Kitchen Academy. Jobs Kitchen Academy is a program to teach teens in about entrepreneurship with hands on learning, unique curriculum, and local leaders. The Academy is a supplement to their school work and won’t have homework so it will be manageable for teens already balancing school, a job, and/or sports.

  • What advice do you have for someone looking to explore a career entrepreneurial impact investing?

Denny recommended devoting one to three years to working in startups. When you’re young there is a much lower risk because you have fewer financial obligations. Don’t be afraid to fail but be prepared to rebound quickly.

We then side-stepped into the topic of general early-career advice: Build your reputation carefully, early, and with supervisors of influence. Whenever given the chance, express yourself clearly and articulate and demonstrate your skillset. Also, it is very important take initiative and always deliver more than asked for. However, beware of the pitfall of becoming a lone wolf, nobody likes a know-it-all that keeps their team in the dark to make themselves look better. Use your team to do more and become a leader in the process.

  • What are some of practices you have that you think make you an effective leader?

Denny does well delegating and challenging his employees. He explained that it is not productive to belittle them by over-explaining, if they have questions they will ask. Denny also works everyday to be approachable, available around the office, and actively building relationships by listening and showing compassion.

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Vermont’s Sustainable, Innovative Roots

It’s popular to think of the 1960s and 1970s as a time when the hippie and counter-culture movements found and flooded Vermont — “turn on, drop out” and all that.

Lesser known is the history of that time when, although many moved to Vermont to find and build a different way to live, a number also were inspired to find and build a different way to do business. Some of Vermont’s most iconic brands — like Ben & Jerry’s and Burton Snowboards — were born out of this spirit, and have set the standard for an approach to business that emphasizes multiple bottom lines.

The Jogbra, which revolutionized women’s sports and is in the permanent collection at the American History Museum at the Smithsonian Institute, was invented here in Vermont in 1977. One of the inventors, Hinda Miller, is a member of The Sustainable Innovation MBA Advisory Board, and is very active in helping our students think about and launch careers in sustainable, innovative businesses.

Listen to Hinda — trained as a theatrical costume designer — talk about her Vermont entrepreneurial awakening in this podcast produced by the Vermont Historical Society, the Vermont Humanities Council, and VTDigger.

Podcast:  Before Your Time: From communes to commerce

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When Things In The Classroom Get “Ruff”

This post was written by Ben Hastings ’18

All dog lovers know the feeling. When you come home from a long day and receive a warm greeting from your four-legged friend – it’s almost as if the stresses of the day melt away with a few wags of the tail and a walk around the block.

Fortunately for us at The Sustainable Innovation MBA, we don’t have to wait until we get home to experience this joy. Meet Willy Wonka, a 3-year-old chocolate lab who has bounded into Kalkin 110 as our 31st classmate during Professor Erik Monsen’s “Crafting the Entrepreneurial Business Model” class.

Throughout the course of the class, our learning teams have come up with various entrepreneurial ventures. One of the most important processes in determining if the venture is viable is mapping out what the value proposition of the company is.

Prior to creating value proposition maps for our entrepreneurial ventures, Dr. Monsen suggested we first practice on Willy Wonka. He was a prime subject for this class exercise. In creating a value proposition map, one needs to ask 3 questions of the business — or in this case, a lovable pooch.

Question: What are the services that he provides (or in this case, what does he do)?

Answer: Enjoys sports (fetch, obstacle courses, etc.), lover of all things outdoors, likes people, loves to eat (hopefully, he doesn’t love to eat people — Editor)

Question: How is Willy a pain reliever?

Answer: Encourages exercise, provides comfort, absorbs negative emotion  and reduces stress, acts as a home security system

Question: How is Willy a gain creator?

Answer: Makes exercise fun, provides opportunities to cuddle, delivers a sense of achievement when he learns tricks

Willy Wonka doesn’t just demonstrate his value around the house. His “dad” is a professor of entrepreneurship, so naturally he has a few different jobs. As a certified therapy dog, Willy Wonka can be seen around campus during exam season providing stress relief to students. When he’s off-campus, you may be able to spot him at your local library, where children read to him. He loves a great story, but it’s hard to know exactly what his favorite genre is. He was even a tester for last year’s cohort’s recycled dog toy company, RePawposed.

I know what you’re thinking: his resume is getting much longer than yours. I think I speak for the rest of the cohort when I say we are all striving to achieve Willy Wonka levels of success.

 

 

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Getting to Know the Class of 2018: Seth Gillim

Seth Gillim ’18 came to The Sustainable Innovation MBA from the Intervale Conservation Nursery, where he was the manager of production, education, and community management. He was interviewed by Isabel Russell, an undergraduate at UVM

Why did you choose to attend The Sustainable Innovation MBA program?

It’s a fantastic opportunity for those seeking to pivot mid-career. Prior to The Sustainable Innovation MBA, I worked in agriculture and non-profits and I had reached a point where opportunities for learning and advancement had flattened out. As a working parent of two young girls, the thought of being in graduate school for years on was overwhelming. The one-year curriculum is perfect for those looking to re-launch their careers quickly.

What has been your favorite part/element of the program thus far?

The teamwork. Nearly every aspect of the program involves group work on some level. This gives you a great opportunity to develop project management and collaborative skills, learn from your classmates, and develop deep and lasting friendships.

What are three things someone considering the program should be aware of?

First, applicants should know that while the program requires an incredible amount of work in a short amount of time, and you will not fail. The professors are all very supportive. Your teammates encourage you and push you to new levels. It’s a unique and special experience to be around so many Type As who are also fully invested in each other’s success and well-being. Second,  Burlington has a very collaborative business ecosystem, which means you can knock on just about anyone’s door and they will talk to you. Successful students schedule a lot of informational interviews and attend networking events. And, third, if you’re not comfortable putting together and giving great presentations in a really tight time frame, you will be.

How has The Sustainable Innovation MBA helped you?

The program forces you to think outside the box and make connections. The coursework and extra-curricular experiences have allowed me to consolidate my various skills and interests into a viable career direction.

Anything else?

I’m really jealous of next year’s cohort, who will enjoy a brand-new building (Ifshin Hall) and expanded facilities.