How do we integrate sustainability into business? Welcome to the world where business as usual is no longer possible. Last night was a Career Night at the Copenhagen Business School (CBS) focusing on the question:
Around 400 students (mainly) and assorted faculty/staff listened to a series of speakers on the Green Global Challenges topic. The Acting President and VP Research, Professor Alan Irwin, started off the evening giving some context around CBS’s Business in Society strategy. They are looking at integrating sustainability into practice through four pillars: educating to transform people, impacting society through research, leveraging local distinctiveness, and extending global engagement. Students at CBS below to an organization all 360degrees Students for Sustainability — and they were out in force.
The key note speaker to provide the political context was Mads Ovlisen, former CEO of Novozyme and current chair for the Danish Council for Social Responsibility. Mads’ main message was about the need for b-school graduates to have a broader knowledge about how society works and is going work — well beyond bean counting and other more traditional business literacies. He mentioned what he thinks is the next challenge:
- Next crisis will be climate provoked — water shortage. By 2030 5 billion people will not have access to adequate sanitary conditions. We are water over-consumers.
He also talked about hope and progress — we have the GS (Goldman Sachs) SUSTAIN, Dow Jones Sustainability Index. the ESG (Env/Social/Government) and a shift to renewable energy. But we need to include environmental costs in the balance sheets of government and we need a new concept for measuring national prosperity.
He ended with the plea that business schools need to be more engaged in the basic workings of society — government, civil society, business — knowledge is needed that goes beyond quantitative skills and tools. There needs to be more dialogue with people outside academia.
The next speaker was Lone Feifer — a strategic project director from VELUX Model Homes. http://www.velux.com/aboutvelux/social_resopnsibility/ VELUX is in the global building materials and home improvement industry. Lone woke us up with the question:
REASONS TO GET OUT OF BED?
- to get smarter?
- to earn $$?
- to have fun?
- to save the planet?
She talked about the importance of this question — and a systematic approach to changing our mindsets. She ended with a couple of provocative sound bytes:
Go and Get a Real Life. Go Co-Create.
One experiment is better than 1000 expert views.
The final speaker that I heard was Claus Stig Pedersen, senior Director and Head of Sustainability Development at Novozymes A/S. Claus’ main theme was about Re-thinking Tomorrow — ‘before’ for Novozyme it was about risk/reputation control and report. ‘Today’ it is about using sustainability as a lever to grown the existing business. ‘Tomorrow’ it is about developing new businesses.
It is a Green Global Race — to win you ned to understand the needs of the world relevant to business, to have proven technologies and solutions and to have a smooth integration into business processes.
I missed hearing representatives from Moller-Maerst (the giant shipping company) and Deloitte.
All-in-all a great event for students and for me — in terms of an introduction into what is happening in sustainability in Denmark generally and the CBS Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility in specific.
Dear Jan,many thanks for your itsreent in the Global Sustainability Jam. We would love to see you participating in the Berlin event. Unfortunately we are unable to invite you manually due to our very little resources we will entirely invest in the jam itself. Please subscribe to this website’s RSS feed to keep up to date and receive news including the publication of the application form which we will add later this month. As well you can follow us on Twitter or like the jam on to keep in touch with us and the event.Thanks again for your itsreent as well as for your patience.Yours sincerely,Martin