It is no secret that markets are starting to demand a more complete picture of businesses' interactions with environmental and social realities of the world — a new, expanded set of success factors and risks to inform key stakeholders — or simply #NewMetrics. How New Metrics are conceived, brought to life, communicated effectively, and perfected over time, are the key questions metrics experts in the Sustainable Brands community are tackling this week at New Metrics '14, taking place in Cambridge, MA, in partnership with the Sustainability Initiative at the MIT Sloan School of Business.
One of the most impactful presentations of the morning came from Dirk Voeste, VP of Sustainability Strategy at chemistry giant BASF. He unveiled a groundbreaking new process BASF has developed for evolving its product portfolio based on sustainability criteria. Called ‘Sustainable Solution Steering,’ the method is used to systematically review and evaluate the sustainability aspects of the approximately 50,000 product applicationsin the company’s portfolio, which represent sales of €56 billion.
Another fascinating case study came from Ben & Jerry’s Global Director of Social Mission Rob Michalak. His team has just launched a pilot project to test the MultiCapital Scorecard™ (MCS), an integrated measurement and reporting system conceived by Mark McElroy of the Center for Sustainable Organizations. Stressing the importance of experiential learning, Michalak explained that the ambition of this project is motivated by Ben & Jerry’s desire to practice the kind of capitalism that enables all stakeholders to prosper at the same time.
A key aspect of MCS is that performance with respect to all capitals is explicitly reported in relationship to the ‘fair share’ of actual science-based thresholds. That helps Ben & Jerry’s figure out, for example, what sustainable thresholds for farmer livelihoods to strive for. Currently the pilot’s scope involves 87 farms in Vermont, with the hope that ultimately it will be a company-wide practice. The ultimate goal, Michalak shared, is to not only ‘comply’ with the fair share of these capitals, but to get to net-positive performance on all of them.
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Paul Herman of HIP Investor, our MC for the morning, began by energizing the audience by reminding everyone that the search for superior new metrics is all about understanding future risk and upside potential — by uncovering knowable but previously ignored information to make markets run more efficiently. He went on to present a few scenarios in which recently constructed sustainable stock portfolios not only outperformed the S&P 500, but were also up to 75 percent less exposed to carbon than traditionally popular investment indices. Among the multiple reasons for building sustainable portfolios is the ability to reward leaders and employees at the same time — simply by rethinking how 401(k) packages are put together.
Allen White of GISR — a Godfather-like figure to the sustainability movement in the US – laid out powerful reasoning for why and how credit ratings and sustainability ratings should join forces for faster progress in corporate sustainability. “We’ve learned the hard way that markets are neither self-regulating, nor self-sustaining,” Dr. White said, the point being that there is tension between free-market capitalism and sustainable capitalism. While many agree it’s time to move beyond ESG denial and defensiveness to more aggressive deployment of mainstreaming ESG reporting data, White explained, there is still not enough trust and respect in the way ESG metrics and ratings are currently delivered. Sustainability ratings are a field of growing activity, but at the same time they are lagging behind credit ratings — there are lessons in transparency, and comprehensiveness sustainability ratings can borrow from credit ones. To help bridge such gaps, GISR is playing a new role in making sustainability ratings more credible through a new hub-style website with detailed profiles and methodologies for hundreds of raters, allowing easy comparisons.
Stay tuned for much more New Metrics ’14 content to come, via more write-ups, plus video, audio and slides available soon in SB’s Digital Library.
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Advisor and Co-Lead, Global Content Strategy & Thought Leadership, Sustainable Brands
Dimitar is a senior sustainability and regeneration strategist, educator, executive advisor and mentor. He currently holds the following active roles: Advisor and Co-Lead, Global Content Strategy & Thought Leadership at Sustainable Brands; Senior Strategist, Content Development & Product Innovation at Sustainability Hub Norway; Executive Advisor at rePurpose Global; and Senior Content Advisor at Integrate2033. He co-led the creation of the SB Brand Transformation Roadmap, a comprehensive navigation tool mapping the whole journey from business-as-usual to a sustainable brand, and co-designed an accompanying assessment process that measures progress in five dimensions: purpose, brand influence, operations and supply chain, products and services, and governance.
Published Sep 25, 2014 7pm EDT / 4pm PDT / 12am BST / 1am CEST