Blog | Recent Posts
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Design For Sustainability
Mark Shayler’s You Can’t Make Money From a Dead Planet looks at how to run a sustainable business. He talks about how sustainable businesses can make money and do better for the world. There are various pieces of advice and useful ideas. A key idea he emphasizes is that you must design for sustainability. Always…
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Advice On Running A More Sustainable Business
David Grayson, Chris Coulter, and Mark Lee have a useful guide which provides advice on running a sustainable business, predictably called The Sustainable Business Handbook. It covers a wide range of issues relevant to making business better. One of the most helpful features were the large number of practical lists. This should be useful for people wanting…
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How Can Sustainability Win Commercially?
John’s Elkington’s Cannibals with Forks is a major book in the field of sustainable business. This drove adoption of the idea of the Triple Bottom Line — managing businesses with a concern for the economic, social, and environmental consequences. Elkington, as a consultant, has a pragmatic attitude. He is all about companies winning commercially by…
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You Are What You Buy
A lot of people worry about increased polarization in society. The concern is that as we share fewer common experiences we are less likely to be empathetic to the needs of those who we share less common ground. This can be seen in politics but it echoes in business. Why would you want to buy…
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Beyond the Bottom Line
Why Your Performance Metrics Might Be Measuring the Wrong Thing We have a problem in business. We talk about purpose, stakeholder value, and long-term thinking—but when it comes to measuring success, we default to the same old financial metrics. It’s like saying you care about health while only ever stepping on a scale. The issue…
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Run By Engineers Or Lawyers
Is it better to be run by engineers or lawyers? Dan Wang poses this question in his book Breakneck which tracks how China is confronting the future. The horrors of being run by engineers suggest that we really need lawyers, but is the US overdoing it? The Rise Of China One of the challenges with…
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Sustainability Must Be Socially Focused
Dan Wang’s Breakneck delves into the transformation of China in recent generations. He moved to Canada when he was young and had a very different life than he would have had if he stayed in China. In a personal assessment, he gives examples good and shocking of how China changed over time. In doing so…
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The Inevitable Transition To EVs
Mike Colias’ book, Inevitable, tracks the rise of EVs (electric vehicles). Unsurprisingly given the title his theme is very much, the inevitable transition to EVs. In the US, you could be forgiven for thinking that EVs are in trouble, but that requires thinking that a clearly superior technology, which is only getting better, will fail…
