Fast Company - February 10, 2010
This blog is co-authored by Second Nature President Anthony Cortese and Senior Fellow Georges Dyer. In Part 1 [2] of this series, we noted that our dominant economic system is not only failing to deliver, it is destroying the life-support system of the only planet we've got. With population on track to grow to 9 billion by 2050 and huge increases in consumption and demand from the developing world, a dramatic rethinking is overdue. Higher education must lead this rethinking. It must transform its teaching, research, operations, and service to communities if we are to have a chance at a thriving, peaceful, global society. There are key academic innovations that can and must happen to prepare graduates--3 million per year--for 21st century business.... Georgia Tech's Center for Biologically Inspired Design [3] brings together biologists, engineers, and physical scientists to facilitate research and education for innovative products, such as more efficient Internet hosting informed by honeybee colonies. The Gund Institute of Ecological Economics [4] at the University of Vermont is taking a transdisciplinary approach to examine the relationships among ecological, political, and economic systems, such as evaluating the Genuine Progress Indicator [5] as a better metric than Gross Domestic Product.
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