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LEADERSHIP IN CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY:
A Primer for Executives and Board Members
It is no longer enough for a company to be profitable. Today many people expect companies to be “sustainable” and “socially responsible,” to be good “corporate citizens” who maximize the “triple bottom line.” But what do these terms mean? Can companies really act on the sweeping agendas beneath them? Can sustainability be profitable?
It can be. Coca-Cola, Dow, GE, HP, Mitsubishi and Nestle help drive profits by aligning sustainability with core business objectives. Learn how top companies embrace a vision that inspires all their stakeholders, and then pursue a practical roadmap with goals and benchmarks that benefit their shareholders and stakeholders. |
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INNOVATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE:
Leadership Opportunities for Executives
Climate change can be a business driver. Regardless of whether predictions of global environmental consequences prove true or not, business executives need to steer their companies through the complex political and marketplace landscape created by the issue.
Innovation offers a potential win-win path for climate change leadership. By focusing on innovation, corporate leaders can shift the debate from costly and sometimes extreme regulatory controls, toward the use of innovative ideas and technologies to modernize industry, drive down costs, and establish new profit centers. This is true even in every market and sector: GE’s Ecomagination helps build the company’s portfolio of “clean technologies.” Coca-Cola’s Global Water Partnership builds its brands and serves its stakeholders. Toyota may make more money on bioplastics that it does with the Prius. ABM-AMRO’s water projects cut greenhouse gases and create tradable credits. 3M and Dow earn well over 100% ROI on green and clean innovations – plus carbon credit revenues. Learn how innovation can make sustainability a profit center. |
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CHINA AND GLOBAL CORPORATIONS ON THE WORLD STAGE:
What to Expect for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing
For global brand name companies, anything said by anyone anywhere – true or not – can impact their brands everywhere. That will be increasingly important between now and August 2008, when three billion people tune in to television to watch the Olympic Games in Beijing. There, activist groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Dream for Darfur, Greenpeace, Reporters Without Borders, and Ruckus Society are grappling with how to harness the Olympics to call attention to child labor, food safety, global warming, chemical spills, sweatshops, curbs on free expression, and China’s alleged role in Darfur genocide. For a complex of reasons, global corporations, rather than Chinese companies and agencies, are likely to be the targets of publicity campaigns.
In an interactive presentation, Bill Shireman will discuss what companies, activists, and interested citizens can expect as the 2008 games approach. Can past adversaries work together to promote sustainability, clean up pollution, improve labor conditions, and promote a free and open society? What can business leaders do to reduce risk, prevent conflict and foster collaborative solutions to labor, environmental, justice, and human rights issues in China? What can activists do to drive positive change? |
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WHAT WE LEARNED IN THE RAINFOREST:
Innovation and Sustainability in Nature and Business
Innovation is at the root of all gain – in nature and in business. Innovation is what ultimately fuels our cars, runs our bodies, generates our thoughts, and delivers our profits. It isn’t just something high tech companies do. We all do it. In fact, nature is the world’s greatest innovator, evolving from simplicity to complexity, from consumption to creation, from the lifeless to the living to the conscious and self-aware. Learn how nature creates value, and how companies in every sector – Coke, Dow, Google, Lowes, Modius, Toyota and more – are emulating its principles. |
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HOW TO WIN THE WAR AGAINST HATE:
The Art and Science of Engagement
Today, reds and blues, Christians and Muslims, Sunnis and Shiites, global companies and anti-globalization activists are burning down their own cities – figuratively and literally – driven by hatred built on a fabricated foundation. If nothing changes – if the ineffective tools chosen so far to “resolve” these conflicts are not superseded by more effective ones – then the wars will likely intensify, damaging or destroying the interests of all sides in the process.
That does not have to happen. Better weapons are at hand to fight these wars – weapons that kill not the combatants themselves, but the ideas and prejudices that turn resolvable conflicts into hate-driven wars of mutual annihilation.
Bill Shireman and his team are experts on hate. They work with people who hate every day: Muslims and Christians who hate each other in the Middle East, Arabs and Africans who hate each other in Sudan, corporate executives and activists who hate each other across the developed and developing world. Shireman’s job is to decimate hate – to destroy it, and the counterproductive actions hate justifies, so that we clear a path for rational, sensible, effective behavior. His strategy: stakeholder engagement. Learn how he does it, on behalf of governments, NGOs, and the world’s leading companies.
Activist groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Dream for Darfur, Greenpeace, Reporters Without Borders, and Ruckus Society are grappling with how to harness the Olympics to call attention to child labor, food safety, global warming, chemical spills, sweatshops, curbs on free expression, and China’s alleged role in Darfur genocide. For a complex of reasons, global corporations, rather than Chinese companies and agencies, are likely to be the targets of publicity campaigns.
In an interactive presentation, Bill Shireman will discuss what companies, activists, and interested citizens can expect as the 2008 games approach. Can past adversaries work together to promote sustainability, clean up pollution, improve labor conditions, and promote a free and open society? What can business leaders do to reduce risk, prevent conflict and foster collaborative solutions to labor, environmental, justice, and human rights issues in China? What can activists do to drive positive change? |
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