Tag Archives: innovation
As alluded to in the BSR conference theme: “Reset Economy. Reset World.”, we’ve entered a brief period where business and society is re-examining core assumptions about how we live and work. There’s a realization that the concept of sustainability is vital and relevant, and that sustainability integration is a business imperative fundamental to innovation, profitability, and ultimate long-term survival.
But it’s not as easy as pressing a reset button (there is no sustainability CTRL-ALT-DELETE key sequence!) In a sense, what we’re talking about is systems redesign. Embedding sustainability is very difficult, not least because of the fundamental culture change that accompanies efforts to integrate and operationalize sustainable business practices. Join that with barriers to implementation ranging from existing political frameworks, lack of scale, and an entrenched system of investor valuation that excludes most social and environmental factors, and the true nature of the challenge becomes apparent.
The BSR conference… More
The Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) conference in San Francisco is in full swing today, and the opening plenary yielded some early insights as to the shape of the event.
Aron Cramer, President and CEO of BSR, highlighted three areas critical for both business and planetary survival in a reset world:
Innovation
System redesign (with the first test of whether we can adequately reshape global systems to be determined in Copenhagen in just a few short weeks)
Leveraging the power of networks
Ernst Ligteringen, Chief Executive of the Global Reporting Initiative, added his own thoughts on the challenge of reshaping systems and economies. He stated that creating a business case for action can be very difficult, as it requires that we justify a transition to a new economy based on current economic fundamentals… something akin to trying to explain quantum physics using Newtonian… More
I sat on a panel at a NIRI chapter meeting on Thursday with Don Kirshbaum, Investment Officer, Policy, at the Connecticut State Treasurer’s Office and Julie Gottlieb, who led the launch of Lenovo’s sustainability program and first report. The discussion was lively: several of the IROs in the room noted that they had never been asked about ESG risk, and one asked whether there had been any studies regarding performance of companies that focus on ESG performance. Happily, I was able to point to SAM’s long-short portfolio (long sustainability leaders, short sustainability laggards), which shows significant outperformance compared with each group; HIP Investor’s HIP 100 IndexSM, which, since 2004, has outperformed the S&P100; and a chart showing the DJSI solidly outperforming both the S&P500 and the DJIA even in this recession.
After the discussion, I was thinking, why are we still having… More
