Enterprise Resilience
Embracing Change in a Turbulent World
Online and self-paced
- 10 hours of recordings and three webinars with the instructor
- Take three+ months to complete the self-placed course
- Receive a GWU Environmental and Energy Management Institute Certificate
- Course counts toward the EEMI Energy Resilience Certificate
Cost $550
Overview
Embracing change has become an imperative in today’s turbulent world. This short course provides a practical introduction to the concept and practice of enterprise resilience—defined as the capacity for organizations to survive, adapt, and grow in the face of turbulent change. Natural and biological systems have evolved a variety of resilience mechanisms. Likewise, designing for resilience can help business enterprises to overcome disruptions—whether from human or natural causes—and to improve their adaptability to changing conditions. Resilience principles can be incorporated into the design of new technologies, products, processes, and competitive strategies. The course draws extensively on case studies of companies that have adopted resilience strategies and provides tools and methods for implementing “design for resilience.”
Topics covered will include the following:
- Resilience in energy systems—balancing sustainability with reliability
- Resilience in safety and security—enhancing enterprise risk management
- Resilience in global supply chains—ensuring efficiency and business continuity
- Resilience in product development—considering the full product life cycle
- Resilience in crisis management—recovering from unforeseen disruptions
- Resilience in environmental affairs—adapting to climate change and resource scarcity
Who will benefit?
- Business leaders will identify enterprise vulnerabilities and design resilient solutions to maximize business continuity in the face of turbulent change.
- Sustainability professionals will expand their strategies and tactics to address key resilience issues and help business units achieve competitive advantage.
- Academics will identify cutting-edge resilience issues that require academic research and develop multidisciplinary capabilities to support industry partnerships.
- Government officials will explore policies and regulatory areas that need resilience thinking, and develop collaborative engagements with business and academia
Meet the Instructor: Joseph Fiksel is one of the original thought leaders in the field of enterprise sustainability and resilience. He has consulted for corporations, government agencies, and non-profit consortia in the U.S. and around the world. Joseph co-founded the Center for Resilience at The Ohio State. He later took the role of Executive Director of the Sustainable and Resilient Economy program, forerunner of the university-wide Sustainability Institute at Ohio State. Joseph is the author of the seminal book in this field, Resilient by Design. Download a bio for Dr. Fiksel.
Course Outline
Four recorded modules comprise the Enterprise Resilience Course. Each module takes about 2 ½ hours to complete. The instructor will lead a Q&A webinar on each module.
Live Webinars: Includes three live webinars with the instructor. Schedule announced in the class.
EEMI Certificate: Issued to students completing a final quiz
Module 1 - Overview (~2 ½ hr.)
Basics of Risk and Resilience
1. Turbulence and Complexity
2. Building Enterprise Resilience
Embracing Change
1. Beyond Risk Management
2. Resilient Supply Network
Illustrative Examples
1. Product Industries: Nokia, L Brands, Cisco, Dow
2. Service Industries: Veolia, DHL, Cardinal, AEP
Module 2 - Systems Thinking (~3 ½ hr.)
Triple Value framework
1. Interdependence of Economy, Society and Environment
2. Sustainability & Resilience: Synergies and Trade-Offs
Practitioner Case Studies
1. Dow Chemical
2. American Electric Power
3. L Brands/Victoria’s Secret
4. IBM Smarter Cities
Module 3 - Implementation (~3 hr.)
Design for Resilience
1. Fundamental Design Principles
2. Stepwise Methodology
Resilience Toolkit
1. Resilience Indicators
2. Resilience Analytics & Simulation
Application Examples
1. Dow Chemical Supply Chain Simulation
2. EPA New England Regional Simulation
Module 4 - Looking Ahead (~1 hr.)
Future challenges
1. Information technology
2. Urban community resilience
3. Environment and energy
Conclusions