Category: Sustainability
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Hopeful Teaching About Climate Change
An interesting challenge with teaching about the problems in the world is that you don’t want it to get too depressing. Listing off a bunch of problems doesn’t really do much to help anyone but it can be pretty miserable. We need ways that the world can get better. We need hopeful teaching, that emphasizes…
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Social Media Calls For Boycotts
Social media calls for boycotts are relatively common. While many calls are not especially impactful few brand managers want to be facing a bunch of people shouting about boycotting their brand. Like a lot of social media engagements call for boycott can get pretty intense. Interestingly, and I guess this is predictable from the way…
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Greenhushing By Private And Public Companies
It is easy to conclude that companies totally changed with the election of Donald Trump. I’m pleased to say that isn’t true as Neil Hawkins and Kelly Cooper, writing last fall in the Harvard Business Review, showed late last year. Of course, some business leaders abandoned what were previously said to be deeply held commitments…
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Sustainability, Simple Models, And Business Schools
Tima Bansal and Valen Boyd have a new paper on business school challenges with teaching sustainability. It seems clear that business schools haven’t got it right yet, how can we be better? What do the authors have to say about sustainability, simple models, and business schools? Teaching Sustainable Business Business schools want to make a…
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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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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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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…
