Building off the presentations and research I have given recently on "Beyond Business As Usual", one of the common themes of discussion is why and how responsible firms will act when it comes to living up to their duty to more than just the bottom line. That, with the cost of externalities of the current business as usual model rising, a new dynamic is beginning to take shape where firms who do no…
Without a doubt, finding ways to effectively engage people is becoming harder to do. Yet, there are moments where a program is able to separate itself and engage using simple ideas. Ideas that don't force engagement, but are done in a manner that engagement is as easy as walking across the street. The recent BDD / China Environmental Protection Foundation did that, literally, and through its…
While interviewing the CSR manager of a large firm in China, we got onto the conversation of how easy it seems to get staff and executives to support programs where the benefactor was half way around the world, but so difficult to engage those same people to engage in a local issue. this is something that I have seen fairly frequently as many I speak have come from the "west", and are in Asia "…
In the recent article The Cheapest Generation, a paragraph stood out: It passed out 100 of the cars to influential bloggers for a free six-month test-drive, with just one condition: document your experience online, whether you love the Fiesta or hate it. Young bloggers loved the car. Young drivers? Not so much. After a brief burst of excitement, in which Ford sold more than 90,000 units over 1…
18 months ago while interviewing 75 social entrepreneurs in China, we asked the question "what has been your greatest success?". It was a question that was originally intended to elicit information about programs that had been successful, traction in developing a revenue stream, or some pride in the fact that their staff of 5 had stabilized and they were poised to grow. Instead, what we hear…
I'm convinced that the only way that we can move towards a true measure of sustainability is to find ways to embed it within the threads of our daily actions, and in a way that are not readily apparent to anyone. And in reading the recent article on Fast Company What sustainability efforts could learn from Angry Birds, I thought that they hit the mark in many ways. The list was: 1. Align emp…
Last week, when I asked my friends on Facebook for their opinion on my recent presentation on Beyond Business As Usual, I was asked by one friend "whatever happened to doing the right thing even if it impacted the profit, the bottom line?" It was a great question, and I had two hree reasons why more firms have not traditionally been willing to see "good" as the "right" thing to do through thei…
In the recent HBR blog post Not Everyone Should Be a Social Entrepreneur, Laura Galinsky (SVP of Echoing Green) writes about a trend she sees where many want to be "social entrepreneurs", but few should be. She was a young, energetic college freshman at NYU who knew just what she wanted. She approached me after I spoke on a panel about social enterprise and said those magic words: "I want to be a…
Over the last month or so, I have been spending a lot of time on the issues related to stabilizing and scaling social entrepreneurs in Asia. Particularly tose in Hong Kong and Mainland China. It is an issue that has been ongoing, and in a recent post Four Gaps in Social Entrepreneurship Frogtek highlighted four of the key gaps that they see as being: Geographic and Cultural Gap. Social…
This evening while speaking with the CSR manager of a large services firm, we were discussing the good impact that a CSR manager can have within the firm. It was an interesting conversation because (1) it was centered around corporate volunteering, the structure that a corporation has in place, and the ability of a single person (who is supported) to leverage that work and (2) we compared her w…
On average, every 6 minutes China's 190 million smart phone users will log on to check in. It is a population that has grown exponentially over the last 5 years, and with the speed by which this crowd moves, it is bringing about on of the greatest disruptions in how firms interact with stakeholders. Gone are the day where firms push content through static channels (billboards, press releases,…
Last week, in partnership with HK Polytechnic, I co-organized with Poly U an event called the Opportunities Beyond Business as Usual for nearly 100 alumni and business executives. An event that came about through discussions about the future of business, and the future of social enterprises, we specifically made the decision to use the two hours to make the case that the meaning of moving be…
I'm currently working on a project to understand the decision making behavior of firms as it related to sustainability performance, and what I am finding is that the key drivers of success are the ability of leaders to understand their stakeholders, how an issue is tangible to their stakeholders, and then be able to develop strategies that effectively address issues of sustainability. Transform…
While meeting with 10 partners from one of the world's leading consulting firms, I engaged in a conversation where I spoke about how foreign firms in China would seemingly do all they could to look away from obvious risk, and then find themselves in crisis mode when things went south. JCI and Apple were my two examples. Particularly as BOTH believed (and fought for) they were within legal para…
While not an expert in business ethics, one of the most frequent discussions I have is the role of ethics as it relates to firms looking to roll out effective and engaging program, particularly in business critical areas, and the correlation between ethical foundations and program success (or failure). Far more practical in Asia, discussions of ethics is traditionally tied to a place that q…
