378: Libba and Gifford Pinchot III, part 1: Redefining business education

August 26, 2020 by Joshua
in Podcast

Rarely do you meet someone who created a word that became common. My guests today, Gifford and Libba Pinchot, created the term intrapraneurship. In the world of leadership and entrepreneurship, they created a discipline.

After years of activism in the 60s, through entrepreneurship in the 90s, and what attracted me to them most, they started a business school from scratch, the first to offer an MBA in sustainable business. Beyond teaching students, they changed the field, as you’ll hear in our conversation.

I’ve worked with a lot of business schools. Today they all have to work on sustainability. As a professor, I can’t imagine sustainability and nature not infused into my courses. The Pinchots helped start that trend. In earlier conversations, we talked about them starting a new branch of leadership and the environment, so toward the end of the conversation, we go meta and talk about how to start a podcast.

(I hope you listeners consider starting a branch yourselves. It will give you the opportunity to lead a movement. It will also set you up to meet the most important people in a field of your interest and make them feel great. Anyone listening who wants to meet the most valuable people they want and make them feel great about helping create an environmental legacy, contact me and I’ll get you started.)

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