Category Archives: Batch7

How do we ‘Hardwire’ Sustainability into Business?

By Daniel Aronson.

While there are myriad perspectives on sustainability and corporate responsibility, each with its own unique value, I often find myself focusing on sustainability’s operational aspects: what can we do to increase the pace at which belief in sustainability translates into concrete actions that benefit the environment, society, and business? To me, a key question is how we get more done, how we “hard wire” sustainability into the way businesses operates.

How Wi-Fi Informs the Need for a Plastic Standard

There was a hole in the system. We needed a standard. A universal standard makes it easier to focus on real impact; to allow everyone to get on with manufacturing their next generations of goods and services. To allow the whole industry to move forward.

Impact Science Part II: Submerged Value

Robert K. Merton, the giant of modern sociology, coined the term the Law of Unanticipated Consequences. He identified two types of consequences: intended, or what he called ‘manifest’ consequences; and unintended, or ‘latent’ ones. Okay, but what does social theory have to do with sustainability? Hmmm. What if we told you that a huge portion of the…

Impact Science Part I: Measuring Total Impact

Over twenty years ago, I was talking to a pharma VP who was in charge of their medicine donation programs in Africa. He was lamenting that he couldn’t quantify the value of his work. “Too bad,” he said, “that it’s impossible to measure the impact we create, on our business and on the world, by…

Impact Science III: Submerged Value is the Majority of Value

Previously, we discussed Submerged Value and made a point of noting how significant a chunk of the total value of sustainable actions it represented. We closed with the rather bold statement that often, submerged value actually rivals — or even exceeds — visible value. Well, we’re here now to back that up. Over more than…

INTELLIGENCE: The White Hats Must Lead

Intelligence, Issue #19.
A laser focus on what works: that’s what we need in our sustainability leaders. There’s no time for low-value actions. The powerful forces determined to hold the status quo on climate have found what works for them. We are the white hats and we must do the same. 
To win we need leaders using scientific rigor and method to find what is most likely to actually work, then to drive only those actions forward. We’re the posse and they have a head start. Finding what works is possible and nothing less will do.
Here’s my take on approaching sustainability projects and problems with rigor. Please let me know what you think.

Rigor Wins the Nobel Prize

From Valutus Sustainability R.O.I. #18 Rigor: Part 1 Consider that the first Econ laureates, in 1969, were recognized for “applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes.” In 1970 it was for, “static and dynamic economic theory.” A year later came, “empirically founded interpretation of economic growth,” followed closely by ‘economic equilibrium theory,’ ‘input-output’ method, the…