Teaching content for INSEAD's degree and non-degree programmes sits at the core of what we support. The aim is direct: a clear line from the research we support to what INSEAD teaches — across the MBA, GEMBA, Master in Management and Executive Education.
How we support teaching
Every research line we support is expected to translate into something a faculty member can use in a classroom — a case, a tool, a live simulation, a course module. That link is not an afterthought; it is the test of whether the work matters.
Course design & delivery
Co-developing flagship electives and infusing sustainability into core MBA, GEMBA and MIM courses — including the mandatory Sustainable Business Model Innovation in MIM.
Case development
Supporting INSEAD faculty to write and produce teaching cases — from traditional written cases to LiveCases, VR experiences and digital tools that bring sustainability decisions into the classroom.
Executive programmes
Contributing core content to the INSEAD Business Sustainability Programme (IBSP), the Certificate Programme in Sustainable Leadership and bespoke company programmes.
INSEAD Hoffmann Institute flagship course
The Ultimate Disruption
Designed by Professor Atalay Atasu, The Ultimate Disruption is an executive course on what the sustainability transition actually demands of business leaders — and what it looks like when they succeed.
This is a course about when the planet matters most for business, and gives participants a working roadmap for business continuity and competitive strategy on a climate-disrupted planet — a question we believe every manager needs to be equipped to think through, regardless of function, industry, or seniority. The course is built entirely on industry-partnered, practically impactful research conducted at INSEAD, and it is itself an example of where that research is heading: it brings artificial intelligence and business sustainability together, in its content and in how it is delivered. In that sense, TUD is the forward-looking face of INSEAD's engagement with business sustainability.
Organizations preparing for that transition routinely discover that the barrier is not just technological or financial — it is also organizational. TUD puts participants inside that disruption rather than in front of it. Across four core sessions, participants experience the systemic challenge through The Salmon Rush, a live simulation, build and stress-test a business sustainability investment case, and negotiate a partnership when the only path to a viable solution runs directly through an ecosystem perspective. A fifth, elective session then lets participants choose the angle most relevant to their own role — governance, entrepreneurship, or rigorous engineering practice — to take the course framework deeper. The course combines short instructor-led video segments, embedded live case simulations, knowledge checks, and AI-coached reflection to give participants both the analytical tools and the experiential grounding to lead a business sustainability transformation — not simply advise on one.
Session 1
The Business Case for Sustainability
The course opens with The Salmon Rush, an interactive cohort simulation. It gives participants direct, felt experience of how individually rational decisions can deplete a shared resource. The debrief that follows works through three behavioral diagnoses for why the collapse happened (short-termism, growth bias, and unpriced externalities), introduces the concept of a stranded asset, and explains why conventional management tools — KPIs and DCF models — are structurally blind to finite, shared resources.
Session 2
This is tough business
The Alpha / Zing LiveCase — a fictional beverage bottler on a Mediterranean island facing a circular-economy investment decision. Participants take on a functional role inside Alpha’s task force and work through a live case to determine whether a plastics-recycling pilot can be made financially viable under a conventional financial framework.
Session 3
Measuring Better
Participants return to the Alpha case under a different lens. Where Session 2 asked whether the project could clear a conventional NPV hurdle, Session 3 asks what happens to the investment case when an extended measurement framework — “NPV+” — is applied: one that makes the framework from Session 1 concrete and quantifiable. The session closes by transitioning toward a structurally different version of the same underlying problem, which Session 4 takes up directly.
Session 4
Better together
Zing, a global beverage company, has acquired Alpha and inherited the recycling project of Alpha. Participants now work the case as members of Zing’s sustainability task force, discovering the financially viable path forward This is the most complex live case in the course.
Session 5
Participants choose one of two Elective tracks, each anchored in a different real-world story and built around its own case
a) Entrepreneurship & Experimentation: building a sustainability-native business from first principles, using the story of Polygreen and the Tilos zero-waste island — and what it took to turn that proof of concept into a bid for a 150,000-resident district in Abu Dhabi.
b) Rigorous Engineering Practice: what happens when a genuinely rigorous Life Cycle Assessment contradicts a company’s public sustainability commitment, followed through the experience of researcher Alfonso Martínez and his findings for an industrial equipment manufacturer.
Cases Study library
Explore a curated selection of case studies developed by INSEAD faculty, spanning Environmental, Social, Governance, and Interdisciplinary themes.
