Experts say there will be another 2 billion people living on our Earth by 2050. To support these folks — and those already here — we will need the resources of almost three Earths. To state the obvious, this need poses some imminent and urgent global challenges.
Optimization and conservation of the Earth’s finite natural resources will be the defining growth drivers over the coming decades. Solutions that help sustainably feed, hydrate, house, move, power and keep the growing world community healthy will drive business success.
No single company, government or institution alone can solve these inter-connected global challenges. To the contrary, truly impactful solutions will derive from collaborative innovation between corporate, governmental, non-governmental and academic institutions.
For companies aspiring to help drive these impactful solutions, being a trusted and trust-worthy corporate citizen is prerequisite. Whether you have 100,000 employees or 100, in today’s world of social media and the 24-hour news cycle, the links between and among reputation, business success, and sustainability have never been stronger, and the costs of unethical behavior and a damaged reputation have never been higher.
In his acclaimed book “How,” Dov Seidman makes a compelling case for the value of ethical behavior, asserting to great effect that the value of what you do is determined in large measure by how you do it. The best and really only way to ensure ethical behavior within a business, he says, is to institutionalize it – establishing a culture of “self-governance.”
