When:
We are offering four repeated sessions – please sign up for a single slot based on your availability/timezone:
- 21 October – PM session (Americas friendly) | 15:00–16:30 CET
- 23 October – AM session (Asia Pacific friendly) | 10:00–11:30 CET
- 24 November – AM session (Asia Pacific friendly) | 10:00–11:00 CET
- 25 November – PM session (Americas friendly) | 15:00–16:00 CET
About the session :
Climate change is already reshaping lives, livelihoods, and ecosystems around the world. Building resilience means finding ways for communities and businesses to adapt to these impacts and prepare for future shocks. While the need is urgent, adaptation often faces persistent barriers, especially for local entrepreneurs and innovators working on the frontlines.
In this session, we use the case of Mountain Harvest, a Ugandan coffee enterprise, to explore what adaptation looks like in practice. Their experience illustrates the opportunities to create systems of value in ways that strengthen farmers, businesses, and local communities alike. At the same time, it highlights the challenges of being part of the “Missing Middle” — too large for small-scale support, but too small or risky for mainstream funding. From there, we zoom out to identify structural barriers and explore how to create the enabling environment that helps frontline adaptation entrepreneurs overcome the Missing Middle gap and achieve both systems value (benefits across communities, ecosystems, and economies) and resilience at scale.
Audience: The series is primarily aimed at business students and learners, innovators, or entrepreneurs keen to understand the drivers of modern business and how climate adaptation and resilience can help unlock meaningful action towards sustainability.
Learning outcomes:
Through interactive discussions, participants will gain tools to apply systems thinking, understand the challenges of locally led adaptation, and identify opportunities to build resilience at scale. Following the training session, participants will gain access to the full Harvard Case Study learning assets.
- Understand what climate adaptation and resilience mean and why they matter
- Analyse real-world practices through a case study
- Identify structural barriers facing locally led adaptation efforts
- Explore practical tools and system-level opportunities to support resilience
- Apply systems thinking to design inclusive adaptation models
Trainer: Dr. Annika Surmeier
Senior Lecturer & Academic Director, CEMS Master in International Management, University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business. Dr. Surmeier’s work focuses on social innovation, global value chains, and climate adaptation, with a strong emphasis on Africa and the Global South. She collaborates closely with international organisations, NGOs, and businesses to co-create inclusive and sustainable pathways to address global challenges.