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About to start “Valuing Impacts to Make Better Decisions” with the Value Balancing Alliance and the International Foundation for Valuing Impacts at the Harvard Club. #NYCclimateweek

Growth through Transformation Transformation through Alignment HBR's latest research finds that achieving success in data and analytics goes beyond technology and skills. It’s about creating a data-driven culture, securing leadership commitment, and empowering employees. But most importantly, it’s about aligning these capabilities with your business goals. They surveyed 323 companies and discovered that alignment between senior leaders and data managers is critical for leveraging data analytics for business growth. Interestingly, while initial investments in talent and technology yield benefits, further gains require more than just additional resources – they need alignment. This is true for Sustainable transformation too. How are your social impact goals aligned with your business goals? Is the plan translated into all the languages of business (Finance, Logistics, Brand, etc)? Only once you have the strategy and team aligned with how your company operates can you unlock sustainable growth and not be mired in sustainable compliance. Dive into our findings to understand how companies can measure and achieve true transformation success. Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/eAm6MSdw #SustainableAnalytics #SustainableTransformation #BusinessGrowth #DataDriven #AnalyticsStrategy #Alignment

🌱 Ready to transform your CPG supply chain's environmental impact into a powerhouse of benefits? 🌱 Our latest Medium article delves into the often-overlooked co-benefits of sustainable agricultural practices. Beyond cleaner water and reduced greenhouse gas emissions, discover how these initiatives can drive higher crop revenue, lower community health costs, and even boost literacy rates and economic equality. By understanding and leveraging these co-benefits, you can shift from mere compliance to strategic risk management and community investment. From offering upfront bonuses to farmers for cover crops to enhancing local climate resilience, these actions lead to faster adoption, increased supply chain resilience, and a more lucrative ROI. Dive into the power of logic models to track costs, activities, and outcomes, and see how a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis can reveal new investment opportunities and long-term business viability. Embrace the full spectrum of benefits. Be friends with Co-benefits. Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/g37ezz_C #SustainableAgriculture #CoBenefits #EnvironmentalImpact #SupplyChainInnovation #ClimateResilience #GreenBusiness #SocialImpact #AgricultureInnovation

🌎 "My background is in corporate strategy, and that’s really the mindset that I bring as we think about how we take a path that’s good for the planet, good for people, but also good for PepsiCo." - Jim Andrew, PepsiCo's CSO You're on to something there, Jim. Sustainability isn't just a goal; it's at the heart of our strategic transformation. #Sustainability #CorporateStrategy Here's the full WSJ article/interview: https://lnkd.in/gG99V98w

https://lnkd.in/eujrXMnJ Here's another excellent article from the folks at HBR. They highlight potential structural biases in ESG rating systems, which can mislead investors. But as we've seen with our corporate clients, the solutions they call out move sustainability from vague and annoying oddity to part of the regular business process that uses the same tools to operate as the rest of the organization. Here are the "measurement traps" and solutions to look out for: Simplification Bias: ESG raters often measure easily quantifiable metrics, neglecting more complex but relevant aspects. For example, they measure Scope 1 greenhouse gas emissions controlled by firms but ignore emissions from suppliers, making firms appear greener than they are. Categorical Bias: ESG raters simplify complex features into existing frameworks, overlooking green innovations in industries like oil and gas, which are often excluded from ESG funds despite their significant contributions to carbon reduction technologies. Over-Simplification Bias: ESG ratings compress diverse, multi-dimensional data into single scores, losing critical information. Investors might have varied priorities that are not accurately reflected in a single ESG rating. To address these issues, the article proposes a two-pronged solution: Unbundle ESG Components: Separate the environmental, social, and governance components so that companies and investors can focus on specific areas of strength and interest. This approach promotes specialization and efficiency in the investment ecosystem. Empower Companies to Declare ESG Objectives: Allow companies to publicly declare and focus on specific ESG goals that align with their operations and strengths. This targeted approach ensures resources are allocated effectively and fosters collaboration between companies, industry groups, policymakers, and rating organizations.

It's well-documented that the modern highly-industrialized food system poses significant detriment and externalized costs to both the environment and human health, with an estimated $12.7 trillion in hidden costs according to the University of Michigan. 💰 This model is "characterized by monocultures, reduced genetic diversity, growing dependence on chemical and pharmaceutical technologies, and the consolidation of farms", in the words of UMich professor Ivette Perfecto. These factors collectively contribute to climate change, reduce biodiversity and undermine food security. 🏭🌱 💡One potential solution? Agroecology. Agroecology has emerged in the spotlight as a means of improving equitable access to healthy food and promoting long-term resilience. Cross-sector support for the practice is growing, but a "pluralistic movement" involving strategic coordination across diverse fields and actors will be necessary to achieve its potential benefits. https://lnkd.in/e76JfMiA #agroecology #agriculture #food #science #STEM #sustainability #regenag #foodforthought #innovation

Generative artificial intelligence seems to be everywhere these days, and it's only continuing to grow. But where is the energy coming from to power it? From computation, to data storage, to cooling down equipment and more, massive amounts of resources like water and electricity are required to keep up with demand. Regulators, scientists and industry leaders must react accordingly– and quickly– to prevent this trend from posing detrimental risks to the environment. https://lnkd.in/eX7WGWFi #AI #artificialintelligence #GenerativeAI #tech #environment #STEM

ESG isn't just a catchy acronym– it's a legitimate framework for assessing and mitigating risk. The jury is out on whether or not ESG is the right term for everyone; but regardless, it's clear that social and environmental factors impose both hazards and opportunities for businesses and investors. “Abandoning a deal is certainly not an easy decision. While commercial or operational concerns are often the main reasons for walking away from a deal, ESG red flags are increasingly being considered with the same level of seriousness to either pause or end deal activity.” A Deloitte survey found 70% of M&A leaders reporting abandoning potential acquisitions over ESG concerns, and "a vast majority saying they would be willing to pay more for targets with strong ESG attributes". https://lnkd.in/eqHcTN5f #ESG #mergers #acquisitions #investors #risk

Shifts in consumer demand, waves of shareholder activism, and emerging reporting and compliance regulations have propelled the role of chief sustainability officer from a "backroom marketing function" to a major player in a company's operation and growth. For #CSOs, this means heightened responsibility, multifaceted expectations, and keeping up with an "alphabet soup of regulatory requirements." 🍲 The need for a specialized and strategic CSO is becoming increasingly clear, reflected by a 29 percent increase in U.S. public companies with an employee in the position. Of those CSOs, over 75% are on the company's leadership team and over one-third report directly to the CEO. This trend is spreading even faster in Europe; for example, PwC reports 90% of German companies having had a dedicated CSO role in 2022. Sophia Leonora Mendelsohn, CSO at SAP, summed it up perfectly to The Wall Street Journal: "There is business to be done now. A real big multibillion-dollar business to address sustainability through a company's value chain." 🔗 https://lnkd.in/gzmUwhte #CSR #CSO #compliance #sustainability #supplychain #impact #trend

🧠 Emotional intelligence is more important than an MBA. (Don't worry– we're *half* kidding.) As the business landscape evolves, so does our understanding of the requirements for success. For decades, an MBA was seen as the golden ticket to career advancement. But these programs are expensive– not just in size, but also in opportunity cost. 💰⏰ The hard skills once unique to the MBA curriculum can now often be acquired online in significantly less time and at a lower price. Concepts such as return on investment and profit and loss statements have become common knowledge, integrated into the vernacular of even the youngest entrepreneurs through their side hustles and startups. Further, the rise of advanced software tools and AI is steadily creeping up on quantitative territories traditionally dominated by MBAs. There’s one aspect of business that machines can’t touch: the human element. The true value of an MBA increasingly lies not in the hard skills it imparts, but in the soft skills– those centered around building relationships and understanding people. But these skills don’t actually require business school at all. 💡 https://lnkd.in/drqT7xMS