Expert Voice:

Daniel Aronson

Daniel Aronson is the founder of Valutus, which specializes in creating value through sustainability and responsibility, the creator of the Value of Values™ Model, and the author of the book The Value of Values (MIT Press, February 6, 2024). He has helped clients identify and quantify over $2 billion in sustainability-driven business value.

Daniel coined the term “submerged value” and created the first set of tools for dramatically accelerating double materiality (Materiality Science™).

He has guest lectured at Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan’s Sustainability Lab and has written or been featured in over 100 articles and publications.

Surfacing Submerged Value

17 Published Articles

‘The Value of Values’: Lessons from Tony’s Chocolonely

‘The Value of Values’: Lessons from Tony’s Chocolonely

The story of impact-driven chocolate maker Tony’s Chocolonely has important lessons for sustainability practitioners — which makes its story even sweeter.

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Tony's Chocolonely

Consumer Insights

Food & Beverage

Corporate Communications

Education/Research

Finance/Insurance/Investment

Meaningful Connections

The Bottom Billion

Responsible Consumption

Activating Purpose

The Only Value Sustainability Can’t Possibly Have

The Only Value Sustainability Can’t Possibly Have

Right now, far too much of the business world is giving sustainability a value of zero, when nothing could be farther from the truth.

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The V Model: Validity, Vulnerability and Elon Musk

The V Model: Validity, Vulnerability and Elon Musk

The financial and reputational freefall that Eli Lilly experienced in the first few weeks of Musk’s tenure as Twitter chief illustrated an underappreciated factor in an organization’s level of vulnerability: validity. Companies need a risk model that includes the key elements of vulnerability — and that helps them take precautions, set up checkpoints and plan for contingencies.

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Corporate Communications

Meaningful Connections

Fool Me Twice: Accepting the ‘Now Normal’

Fool Me Twice: Accepting the ‘Now Normal’

It is critical, for business and the planet, that humanity reset our approach to climate events. The future ‘new normal’ is already here. It may bring a new ‘new normal,’ and that will truly be epic — the first time. But we can't continue to approach such events like singularities sweeping in once each century. They are here. Now.

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Finance/Insurance/Investment

Living Within Our Means

Never Say Die: Forging Ahead After the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of 2020

Never Say Die: Forging Ahead After the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of 2020

Much of the time, 2020 felt like endlessly rolling a heavy stone uphill day upon day, only to watch it tumble down again. Yet, in truth, we have done good work. We have hauled that boulder farther up the slope, in spite of everything.

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A Return to Atlantis, Part I: Infrastructure on the Brink

A Return to Atlantis, Part I: Infrastructure on the Brink

Every aspect of coastal infrastructure will be impacted by sea level rise; and the sheer size of the problem is difficult to comprehend. We can’t just turn Venice, California into Venice, Italy; but there are things we can do to protect our coastal communities and infrastructure.

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Natural Resources

Building/Construction/Real Estate

Biodiversity/Natural Capital

Issues and Values in the Age of Pandemics, Disruption and Division

Issues and Values in the Age of Pandemics, Disruption and Division

I call the tying together of identity, values and purchasing “corporate citizenshop,” and it is growing — even in the midst of a pandemic, global economic issues, political uncertainty and much more.

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Consumer Insights

Meaningful Connections

Responsible Consumption

Incomplete Risk Formulas Are Risky Business

Incomplete Risk Formulas Are Risky Business

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. But standard formulas for calculating risk leave out critical factors — such as vulnerability and submerged risks — that would more holistically and accurately assess risk. A new model addresses this.

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Hey, Milton … Here We Are, After 50 Years of Friedmanomics

Hey, Milton … Here We Are, After 50 Years of Friedmanomics

What is the responsibility of business? Fifty years on, it’s clear there’s more to the answer than you thought.

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Biodiversity/Natural Capital

Extended Producer Responsibility

Responsible Consumption

Implementers, Catalysts and This Moment in History

Implementers, Catalysts and This Moment in History

"If you’re going to do something great, why not spread it around? Why not be a catalyst and amplify the impact exponentially?" — Daniel Aronson

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Science-Based Targets

The COVID Covenant: Don’t Go Back — Go Big and Go Now!

The COVID Covenant: Don’t Go Back — Go Big and Go Now!

We know that we can buy less, use less, work from home, drive less, collaborate more; and have business, society and government move faster — because we just did all of that. How can we respond as powerfully and courageously to other super-critical threats?

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Phillip Clawson

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Living Within Our Means

Activating Purpose

Black Lives Matter

How to Fix Foresight in This ‘New Normal’

How to Fix Foresight in This ‘New Normal’

COVID-19 has fragmented the future. Your best-laid plans may lie broken. But it is possible to bring order to a world of multiple, uncertain futures; and lay the groundwork for the reset we need.

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And then there were 10 …

And then there were 10 …

In the case of the climate crisis, we’re not facing one tipping point, but two. The hard part: These two tipping points would tilt us in opposite directions! But our current situation doesn’t mean it’s game over — it means it’s game on.

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Living Within Our Means

Sustainability Skeptics, No More: Getting Past the Three Walls

Sustainability Skeptics, No More: Getting Past the Three Walls

You’re sitting across from the decision-maker for a large potential sustainability project. It’s taken months, possibly years, to get here. If your numbers look good, the decision is much more likely to be a positive one for you, for them and for the world.

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Breaking Through to the C-Suite: A ‘How To’ for Sustainability Executives

Breaking Through to the C-Suite: A ‘How To’ for Sustainability Executives

Even at this advanced stage of our climate and resource debacle, sustainability practitioners still do not possess the same status in corporations as their purely business-minded brethren. How do we get sustainability officers both the recognition they deserve and the clout that should go with it?

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Brands Taking Stands

Future Value, Submerged Value, 'ROP' & Other Facets of the ROI of Sustainability

Future Value, Submerged Value, 'ROP' & Other Facets of the ROI of Sustainability

Cross-Posted from Finance & Investment. Last week at Sustainable Brands’ New Metrics ’18 conference in Philadelphia, PA, over 300 delegates from brands, NGOs, strategists and practitioners across sectors gathered to share the newest credible tools and solutions for assessing the ROI of Sustainable Business.

`Materiality Is Broken. But It Doesn’t Have to Be.

`Materiality Is Broken. But It Doesn’t Have to Be.

In formulating strategy, shaping communications and improving their impact in the world, companies, and their sustainability teams, must answer two big questions: "What is important to our business?” and "What is important to our stakeholders?” (Sometimes as a proxy for the larger question: “What is important to the world?")

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Value of Values cover