The Talent Hunt

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At Virginia Commonwealth, Boyko launched a new master's degree in creative brand management, which is an alternative MBA for those interested in careers as chief marketing officers or advertising account managers.

Sometimes managers need to get two kinds of training—technical and design—from two institutions to do their jobs. In France, Eloi Baudoux was on the fast track in 1998, when as a student in Paris' prestigious engineering school Ecole des Mines, he took a summer internship at Renault (RENA.PA). But once inside the automotive giant, Baudoux found that his science background wasn't enough. "I realized that engineering activities would not allow me to get as close to the product, to the human and customer processes, as I needed to be." In fact, says Baudoux, "I found I could not be taken seriously within Renault without a design background."

Luckily, Ecole des Mines had a partnership with Strate Collège, a design academy in a Paris suburb (and a new addition to our list). When Baudoux finished his formal engineering training in 1999, he was able to move directly into a two-year Master's program in design.

Baudoux kept in touch with Renault, and in 2001 he met with a manager who was interested in recruiting a team to craft a vision for the company's research and development arm. Baudoux, two other design-engineers, and a sociologist were hired. His role at Renault is to offer strategic ideas for both designers and engineers. He explains to car designers how new technologies will affect the user experience. He also translates what experiences customers want to engineers, in order to help them build better cars.

"Sustainability" is on the lips of nearly all chief executives as they attempt to go carbon neutral in making and distributing their products and services. That means revamping materials, manufacturing, distribution, and their energy use.

True, there appears to be a lot of "greenwashing" going on, with companies buying dubious carbon emission offset credits to establish credentials that allow companies to call themselves green while flying executives on private jets to conferences and paying people not to chop down trees.

Yet companies are feeling real pressure from Wall Street to reduce environmental liabilities, from European customers demanding planet-friendly products and from younger new hires who take green issues seriously. Increasingly, CEOs themselves see sustainability as fitting well with strategies for market expansion and growth. So they are racing about looking for designers, managers, and strategists who are knowledgeable about building sustainable products and implementing processes.

"Companies are turning to design schools and programs for this kind of talent. The business-design degree program at the Illinois Institute of Technology Institute of Design offers a class on sustainable design. This executive education program focuses on getting managers talking about the environment "in the early phases and in the corner office," says Jean-Paul Kusz, a business school professor teaching in the IIT design program."

Next spring, Northwestern University's Kellogg Business School's program in social enterprise is adding a class on sustainable manufacturing, bringing engineers and business students together to cooperate on product development with sustainability in mind. "It's top-down driven; CEOs are into it, so we believe we have to teach it to the students," says professor Walter Herbst.

European design schools have long been leaders in sustainability because of government regulations, consumer demands, and market opportunities. Design school KaosPilot International takes a hands-on approach to designing in a global context. Not only does the school have headquarters in four Scandinavian countries, but students spend about half their degree traveling the world on team projects called Outposts, where they work on designs for businesses and nonprofits in the local community. On their Outpost in Dublin, students plan to "green" the city of Dublin with roof gardens that would absorb CO2.

Whether it's in Cincinnati or Rio de Janeiro, some of the best ideas often come from students. At the Design Incubator at Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial in Rio, students devised a way to turn resin from discarded palm trees, which are harvested for their heart of palm fruits, into a material that is firm enough to be used as a replacement for wood. The class project has led to new products, from skateboards to furniture, while helping to recycle waste. And last spring, Parsons The New School for Design senior Rishi Desai organized a university-wide competition of sustainable design projects. In his senior thesis, Desai is turning insights from the competition into models for sustainable business.

Attracting top-of-class talent is getting more competitive, and some companies are already offering sweeteners. Just as they have long been willing to underwrite MBAs for executives, they are now supporting students in design programs. At Stanford University's design school, where MBAs and engineers increasingly collaborate, consultants and companies line up for the best students.

So when Stanford MBA student Sarah Stein Greenberg asked to defer a job offer at business consultant Monitor Group to continue her Stanford D-school project designing irrigation schemes for rural farmers in Southeast Asia, the consulting firm agreed. They even let Greenberg spend another year at the D-school as a teaching fellow. She will start her job as a business consultant with Monitor this fall.

Bansi Nagji, chief executive of Monitor Innovation, says Greenberg's experience will make her a stronger asset. "[It] was compelling to us as we were starting to see the world in similar ways," says Nagji. Greenberg says she has learned "why some organizations can innovate and others can't." Students who can answer that question are just the talent that companies want.

Woyke is a staff editor at BusinessWeek. Maha Atal is an intern at BusinessWeek.