When: 29 March 2013, 09:00am to 12:00pm Where: To be confirmed Contact: Jasmine Wang ([email protected]) Cost : TBC For many who still only see Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as a "nice to have", CSR is merely a box to check with no clear strategic purpose; normally just set the budgets for annual donations and volunteering events. However, there are also some co…
Thoughts from Jeffrey Hollender, entrepreneur, author, activist, Co-Founder of Seventh Generation, and Co-Chair of the Board of Directors for Greenpeace USA. The vision behind our idea is a world where people don’t carry hazardous chemicals in their bodies, the environment is free of toxic pollutants, and the economy diligently conserves its natural resources for consumers and future generation…
Thoughts from Ray Anderson, Founder and Chairman of Interface, Inc., an industry leader in sustainability. As long as the market is steered by invisible subsidies and perverse incentives, as long as it remaining blind to the real costs (economic, social, and environmental), it cannot steer a safer course through the storm any better than a blind helmsman can keep a ship off a reef. -- Ray An…
As Beijing tallies the costs of the smog that inundated the city this week, economic and social, I thought I would highlight a recent lecture I gave that explored the "Big 4" questions that people are asking these days when wondering when action will be taken. How big is the problem faced? What is the timeline? Who is responsible? How much will it cost to fix? Meant to create a fr…
Thoughts from Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever: The question that should be asked is "why is operating an unsustainable business model that damages the mere system that business needs to participate in to survive an accepted business model?" -- Paul Polman Paul Polman has been CEO of Unilever since January 2009. Under his leadership Unilever has an ambitious vision to fully decouple its growt…
Over the last few months, one of the topics that I have been speaking on has been the need for firms to go beyond "Business as Usual," and last week Interface Flooring once again provided an excellent example for how a firm can do just that. Their announcement, Interface To Recycle Discarded Fishing Nets Into Carpet provides an overview of the program: Global carpet tile manufacturer Inter…
For many organizations, profit and non, one of the hardest parts about growing as an organization is maintaining focus. But, even for those that do there is another problem. Maintaining the culture of the organization. Something that I have seen over and over again in many of the organizations that I have worked with, and more personally, some of the organizations that I have founded. Called "T…
Thoughts from Bill Clinton, former President of the United States and Founder of the Clinton Foundation: The 21st century is either going to be the most interesting time in human history, or it is going to be very bleak, and I don't think we have decided yet. We haven't made the fundamental decisions about whether we are going to share the future or fight over it. - Bill Clinton After…
Last week was "boot camp". 200 MBA students engaged in a week of sustainability. Lectures, panels, movies, workshops, and case studies. It was an intense period that precedes their projects (we launched 34 student projects at the same time), and is meant to give students an understanding of the issues faced (environmental, social, and economic), the role of the firm, and the responsibility t…
When speaking about sustainability, I often revert to a patter of addressing the what, why, who, and the how much. What are the problems. Why these problems are important Who will is responsible for addressing them How much it will cost And without exception, I can carry a crowd of MBAs, EMBS, EVPs, or CEOs, through the first two because with a couple of tweaks to my pitch I can c…
For those of you who missed it, the World Bank came out with a report today stating they are now seeing a reasonable chance that the temperature of the Earth will rise 4 degrees by 2060. To say that this will have radical consequences on large geographic areas and populations on Earth is an understatement, but one has to wonder... will anything be done in time? This was a question that I f…
Tweaking the graphics that I have come to rely on for many of my presentations, I decided it was time to take a crack at developing a visual representation of what I feel has become the gap between economic performance and social and environmental sustainability. And the above was what I have come up with. For me, where this simple visual I believe does the job is that the sustainability gap…
Last week, I returned to speak for the fourth time at the China Supply Chain Council on an issue I have spent a lot of time on, recalibrating supply chains. Focused on the impact that local issues and stakeholders are going to have on the supply chain’s of many operating in China,the overarching goal of the presentation was to highlight opportunities for firms to strengthen current systems as wel…
When occupying as dynamic of an ecosystem as we do now, there are bound to be a few questions about the latest programming that everyone is talking about. CSR, sustainability, social entrepreneurship, and public and private impact investment have in one form or another been held up at the model of the future. Only to find the term overused to the point where cynics are allowed to enter and questio…
Last week, we held the second in the Beyond Business As Usual events, Social Innovation as a Sustainable Business Model. Hosted by HK Polytech University, roughly 220 people showed up to learn about what social innovation was and how it is rolling out through organizations large and small. For my part, I focused on the fact that as "Business as Usual" moves from a model where profit maximiz…
