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Orchestrating Movements: A New Role for Leaders
LEADERSHIP - 2011 has been a rough year for leaders. Popular revolutions toppled dictators in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya; the Occupy movement attacked corporate leaders who led us into recession; Europeans tossed government after government; and Americans watched in horror as their political leaders led the nation to the brink of default. We shook our heads as global summits failed to make any si
Thought Leadership and Sustainability: As Within, So Without
LEADERSHIP - The more things change, the more they stay the same. Like most clichés, this one conveys some truth, as do words attributed to ancient Greek poet Hermesianax: “As within, so without.” Those who have endured inner-work fully enough to enjoy the outward results will attest that self-awareness leads to empowerment, which in turn leads to voice. Leadership, expressed thro
Novo Nordisk Ranked World’s Most Sustainable Corporation
LEADERSHIP - Danish pharmaceutical firm Novo Nordisk was named the most sustainable corporation in the world by Corporate Knights, the Toronto-based media company focused on “clean capitalism.”Corporate Knights’ 2012 Global 100 list includes companies from 22 countries encompassing all sectors of the economy, with collective annual sales in excess of $3.02 trillion, and 5,285,645 million employees.The top ten companies on the list are:
Novo Nordisk Tops List of World's 100 Most Sustainable Firms
PRESS RELEASE - A triple bottom line business philosophy, a massive push to slash its carbon footprint and selling basic medicines at a discount to poor countries carried Novo Nordisk to the top of the list of the world's 100 most sustainable companies. The Danish pharmaceutical firm was ranked No. 1 on the 2012 Corporate Knights Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World list. Natura Cosmeticos S.A., Statoil ASA, Novozymes A/S and ASML Holding NV rounded out the top five (see the Top 20 below). By country, the U.K. snagged the most nods with 16 companies on the Global 100, followed by 11 Japanese firms, eight French and U.S. firms each, and seven Australian corporations.
Identity-Centered Leadership: Enabling Individuals and Brands to Thrive through Sustainability
LEADERSHIP - Brand leadership is about creating a connection between the brand and its customers. We can identify three waves through which brand leadership has evolved in relation to sustainability:
TerraCycle To Launch Upcycling Program for Disposable Diapers
WASTE NOT - TerraCycle, the New Jersey-based company that specializes in upcycling waste packaging into durable consumer products, will soon launch a program for disposable diapers, according to Waste & Recycling News.Ernie Simpson, global vice president of research and development for Terracycle, says the company is 90 percent finished with the development of a continuous process for collecting, sterilizing and processing used diapers. Certain parts of the diaper will be compostable, and the remaining materials will be upcycled into plastic lumber, pallets and outdoor furniture.
Three Ways to Develop Your Inner Leadership (and Why Leaders of Sustainable Brands Should Care)
LEADERSHIP - Whether you are a business leader or a MapQuest user, knowing where you are and where you want to go is important. But if you’re a leader of a sustainable brand, this is only the beginning. Who you are at your core now counts more than ever.
(Leadership) Change of Heart
LEADERSHIP - I did not think about it before sitting down this evening (January 16, 2012), but to write about leadership on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is to feel one’s own limitations.
How Leadership at Cabot Creamery Makes All the Difference
LEADERSHIP - When was the last time you saw the CEO of a world-class company wading knee-deep in the specification and design of sustainability metrics? Dr. Richard Stammer of Agri-Mark, Inc. (d.b.a. Cabot Creamery Cooperative) is one such person.
Sustainable Brands Releases 2012 Editorial Calendar, Continuing Mission of Inspiring, Equipping and Engaging Sustainability Leaders
PRESS RELEASE - SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., January 19, 2012 – Sustainable Brands has released its full calendar of topics for the successful Issues in Focus series, continuing to explore a wide spectrum of issues including impending global regulatory changes, economic pressures, and changing customer demands.
A New Toolbox For Today’s Brand Leaders
LEADERSHIP - It used to be that good brand management simply meant finding the right positioning, leveraging well-understood media channels and delivering solid quarterly returns. Not anymore.
A Vision of Real Corporate Leadership on Sustainability
LEADERSHIP - The basics of sustainability excellence are fairly well known by now: reduce your footprint, create products and services that help customers do the same, drive employee engagement, think value chain, track data and enable transparency, and on and on. But real leaders will go further and address the scale of the sustainability challenges we face by fundamentally remaking their
Leading Us "Into" The Woods
LEADERSHIP - We use the word leadership easily, as if we really knew what we are talking about. But do we? We often view leaders as the ones who ride in on a white horse to save the day, to slay the dragons, to lead us out of the woods.
10 Character Traits of Today's Leaders
LEADERSHIP - The great transformations in the history of humankind began with a vision -- a powerful vision that inspired and engaged people to collectively transform their reality. We have always had visionary people in our world -- some have used their vision for the good of all -- others for greed, exclusion and destruction.
Supply Chain Sustainability 2.0 – Who Will Be the First?
SUPPLY CHAIN - Most of us who visit these pages are quite familiar with how Walmart used its influence to drive sustainability improvements in its supply chain. But were the gains really about sustainability at all? Strictly speaking, no.Indeed, the most anyone can say about the effects of Walmart’s strategy on its supply chain is that improvements in eco-efficiency, ethical sourcing or what have you may have been made (all good things), but not necessarily in sustainability performance, per se. Costs, too, may have declined and that's always a good thing as well. But to equate decreases in, say, the carbon or water intensity of products with improvements in sustainability performance is to make a serious category error.
Sealed Air Introduces More-Sustainable Packing Peanuts
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING - If you did much holiday shopping online this year, you likely had to deal with pesky, loose-fill peanut packaging that is tough on the environment and difficult to dispose of or recycle.Packaging manufacturers Sealed Air claim to have solved the “peanut problem” with a new loose fill product made of 95% non-food based renewable material.Sealed Air says the product, called PakNatural, provides the same cushioning protection as polystyrene packing peanuts without the static and environmental impact. And it has better humidity resistance than peanuts made of starch, which also have the downside of diverting food sources.
Defining and Developing Personal and Brand Leadership
LEADERSHIP - This month two of us - Andrew Winston and Chris Laszlo - begin 2012 with an inquiry into how personal and brand leadership is evolving to serve both thriving businesses and a flourishing world. The question of what leadership really looks like is vital;
Are Materiality Matrices Really Material?
NEW METRICS - While it is common practice now for corporate sustainability reports to include materiality matrices, whether or not they actually serve their purpose is debatable.
GRI Responds to "Enforce or Explain"
NEW METRICS - GRI has now formally responded to the *Enforce or Explain* campaign we launched last month.
A Public Plea to GRI: Enforce or Explain
NEW METRICS - Motivated, in part, by GRI’s own Report or Explain Campaign, in which GRI exhorts businesses around the world to issue sustainability reports or explain why they don’t, our campaign is aimed at GRI itself.
