MSFS 709 - Sustainability,Innovation&Tech

Course Title: Tech4Development: Applying Technology to Sustainability Challenges Context: This class combines two of the most significant and transformational themes of our time: exponential technological advancement and global sustainability. Technology is disrupting every component of our lives: every business, every government, every investor. Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) issues, and broad-based Sustainability challenges are now being discussed at the highest level - from the cabinet table to the boardroom. Consumers, citizens, and investors alike are increasingly demanding “sustainable” behavior in ways the world has never seen. Regardless of the direction of your life and career aspirations, these two horizontal themes will disrupt your world and our planet. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - from water and health to the environment and education - are bold in their ambition, sweeping in their breadth and gargantuan in their price tag. The only chance the world has of achieving the sustainability targets imbedded in the SDGs will be to aggressively apply technological solutions to solve problems. Technological advancements such as AI, blockchain, biometrics, API, AR-VR, alternative payment models, micro-grids and advances in connectivity, including 5G) represent an extraordinary tool kit, exponentially more powerful when combined. This promise will only be realized if technology is applied and deployed against the world’s sustainability challenges; success will come by piloting, funding and scaling these solutions, and from businesses implementing “do-good, do-well” models. Course Description: The first phase of the course will help you develop a foundational knowledge of critical and emerging technologies. If you are new to tech, this course will leap you forward into the disrupted digital world. If you are well versed in tech, this course will help push you deeper into their applications and inter-related tech solutions. Either way you will leave the course with a comprehensive tech vocabulary, and enough knowledge to conceptually apply solutions. The second phase of the course will explore concrete ways that technology can be applied to sustainability challenges. We will look at real-life applications, with a special focus on private sector , tech-driven solutions. Finally, the course will examine how developmental entities and NGOs are grappling with deploying new technological solutions and recipes for success. Approach and Methodology: The syllabus is online. Students will be given core reading on transformational technologies and tested on each. Class lectures and discussion will be re-enforced with video content and special guests from the private-tech sector and from the policy developmental community (quizzes and participation will be part of the grade). At the beginning of the course, each student will select one SDG and conduct research on how technologies can be applied to achieve it. This project will culminate in a paper/memo and a presentation to the class. The work of A students will be given to leaders in the development community.

Jay Collins

Fall 2022, Fall 2021, Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018

Tech4Development

16

1.5

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