Daniel Aronson
Daniel Aronson is the founder of Valutus, which specializes in creating value through sustainability and responsibility, the creator of the Value of ValuesTM 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 ScienceTM).
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.
Over his career, Daniel has:
▪ Developed Customer ScienceTM and the InVESTTM model, which together quantify the effect of sustainability and responsibility on customer choice and revenue
▪ Developed Impact ScienceTM, which enables companies to assess their true impact on the world—including the impact of their products, operations, and purpose
Daniel is a member of the Advisory Board for Sustainable Brands and served as Chair of the Award Committee for the Spencer Hutchens Social Responsibility Medal and as well as the Ratings & Rankings Council of the Corporate Responsibility Association.
Daniel holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a BA with High Honors from UC Berkeley. He lives in the New York City area. And if you’ve read this far in his bio, let him know and he’ll buy you a drink.
Daniel Aronson is tagged in 22 stories.
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Walking the Talk /
The story of impact-driven chocolate maker Tony’s Chocolonely has important
lessons for sustainability practitioners — which makes its story even sweeter.
- 1 month ago
New Metrics /
Right now, far too much of the business world is giving sustainability a value
of zero, when nothing could be farther from the truth.
- 2 months ago
Marketing and Comms /
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.
- 1 year ago
The Next Economy /
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.
- 2 years ago
The Next Economy /
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.
- 3 years ago
The Next Economy /
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.
- 3 years ago
Walking the Talk /
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.
- 3 years ago
New Metrics /
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.
- 3 years ago
Finance & Investment /
What is the responsibility of business? Fifty years on, it’s clear there’s more to the answer than you thought.
- 3 years ago
Leadership /
"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
- 3 years ago
Walking the Talk /
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?
- 3 years ago
Organizational Change /
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.
- 4 years ago
The Next Economy /
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.
- 4 years ago
Business Case /
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.
- 4 years ago
Business Case /
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?
- 5 years ago
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.
- 5 years ago
New Metrics /
This 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 their latest tools and findings regarding measuring the risks and impacts of previously unmeasured forms of value, the newest credible tools and solutions for assessing the ROI of Sustainable Business.
- 5 years ago
New Metrics /
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?")
- 5 years ago
Collaboration /
Yesterday at SB'18 Vancouver, Kevin Hagen — VP of Environment, Social and Governance Strategy at Iron Mountain — and Dimitar Vlahov, Director of Content Development at Sustainable Brands (SB), offered a sneak peek at the SB Brand Transformation Roadmap (SM). Built for an executive audience, the first-of-its-kind Roadmap is a framework any organization can use as a compass towards setting goals and measuring progress towards becoming a truly "sustainable brand."
- 5 years ago
Press Release /
The SB Brand Transformation RoadmapSM launches today at SB’18 Vancouver as a pioneering self-assessment tool that provides a comprehensive process plan for continuous improvement in sustainability. A first of its kind, it is specifically designed for mainstream brands and businesses who are navigating their journey towards more sustainable business practices.
- 5 years ago