Early Season Admission Deadline, Guarantee Your First Choice, Enroll by Dec 15th
Turn an environmental challenge into a climate-focused business concept and pitch your solution in this two-week afternoon elective at UBC Sauder School of Business.
Course Description
Can a business tackle an environmental problem while creating value for the people it serves? A promising climate idea needs more than good intentions; it needs a solution people can use and a way to assess its impact.
In this course you will explore how entrepreneurship and innovation can respond to climate change and sustainability challenges. Examine how businesses seek to create both economic and environmental value. Use design thinking to identify a problem, consider who it affects, and think about the needs a new product, service, or venture could address.
Explore how business models connect customers, solutions, and value creation. Compare approaches to assessing potential social and environmental impact, and ask what evidence would show whether an idea makes a difference. Team discussions and creative problem-solving exercises help you consider trade-offs, refine assumptions, and explain why a proposed approach might work.
With a team, develop a climate-innovation venture concept. Define the challenge, outline a product or service, describe how its business model would work, and consider how to evaluate its potential impact. Bring your reasoning together in a pitch, practice communicating the idea, and use questions and feedback to strengthen your proposal. Collaboration and leadership are part of making the concept more thoughtful and convincing.
This two-week course is part of UBC Sauder Business Academy. The course is available to residential and commuter students. Beyond class, students connect focused academic work with campus life, growing independence, and clearer direction about what students may want to study or pursue next. The program is developed and academically led by UBC Sauder School of Business.
What You Will Do
• Explore climate and sustainability challenges through an entrepreneurship lens
• Use design thinking to identify a problem and the people affected
• Develop a climate-focused product, service, or venture concept
• Outline a business model that connects users with economic and environmental value
• Consider ways to assess social and environmental impact
• Build and pitch a team climate-innovation proposal
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
• Explain how entrepreneurship and business models can support climate innovation
• Apply design thinking to propose a solution that considers economic, social, and environmental value
• Evaluate the potential impact of a venture concept and communicate it through a team pitch
You’ll leave with your team's climate-innovation concept, proposed business model, pitch presentation, and a certificate of completion.
Why Climate Innovation Skills Matter
A climate solution must do more than sound promising. Entrepreneurs need to understand a real problem, identify who would benefit, and consider how an idea could work as a sustainable business. Design thinking helps students approach those decisions by examining people’s needs before choosing a solution.
Considering social and environmental impact adds another layer of responsibility. Students practice asking what success would look like and what evidence could show progress. Developing and pitching a team idea connects creative problem-solving with leadership, collaboration, and clear communication—skills useful in business, environmental studies, product design, and community initiatives.
Who Should Attend?
For students who have completed 9th, 10th, 11th, or 12th grade.
If you care about environmental challenges and wonder whether a business idea could help address them, this elective offers a practical place to explore the question. You’ll investigate sustainability, shape a venture concept with classmates, and make a case for its potential value and impact.
You don’t need to arrive with a startup idea. Be ready to consider different perspectives, work with a team, and explain how your proposal could make a difference.
Your Summer at UBC Sauder School of Business
The UBC Sauder Business Academy gives high school students a two-week introduction to university-level business at the UBC Sauder School of Business in Vancouver. Led by UBC Sauder School of Business faculty and industry experts, the program combines lectures, simulations, case studies, and faculty-led workshops with team projects that address real business challenges. Students explore leadership, marketing, finance, strategy, and entrepreneurship, then present their ideas to faculty and industry guests in a final showcase.
Outside class, optional on-campus housing, student socials, and networking events bring together students from Canada and around the world. The Point Grey setting, with forest, ocean, and mountain views, gives the summer a distinctly West Coast character as students build business fluency, confidence, independence, global connections, and clearer direction about university study and future careers.
The program is developed and academically led by UBC Sauder.