Course
Course Description
The climate crisis is the defining challenge of our generation and demands more than good intentions… it requires profitable solutions that are positioned to scale. This intensive, hands-on course throws you into the deep end of climate entrepreneurship using battle-tested startup methodologies to solve for possibly our most existential challenge yet. You won’t write detailed business plans or sit through exhausting lectures; instead, you’ll form cross-disciplinary teams, tackle real sustainability challenges faced by industry partners, and get out of the building to conduct stakeholder interviews. Every week you’ll present your new hypotheses, pivot based on evidence, and benefit from direct feedback from mentors, investors, and climate professionals who’ve built real companies.
This is a real-world laboratory for solving actual problems facing business leaders today, ranging from renewable energy transition to fresh water pollution to waste valorization and much more. You’ll master customer discovery, rapidly prototype minimum viable products, and learn to build ventures that are both economically viable and climate-positive. Expect chaos, impossible deadlines, and being pushed past your comfort zone… all to arrive at deeply transformative learning. By the end, you’ll understand how to turn environmental pain points into market opportunities, validate solutions with real users in real-time, and develop the resilience and leadership required to build companies that actually matter. Whether you’re an engineer, policy expert, designer, or scientist, this course will fundamentally change how you approach problem-solving for our planet’s future.
About Challenge Labs
Challenge Labs are 4 unit courses for students of all academic backgrounds who seek a rigorous, interactive, team-based, and hands-on learning experience in entrepreneurship and technology. These courses use a unique pedagogy, The Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship, that involves the use of games, industry guest speakers, team exercises, videos and labs to cover the early part of the startup lifecycle. In these highly experiential courses, students form start-up teams to create technology solutions or services to address a broadly-defined problem posed by an industry partner or social challenge.