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Burgess COMMENTARY |
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www.sbiif.com September 27-28, 2012 | The Wharton School Philadelphia, PA | www.SBiif.com INTRODUCTION As the meaning and measure of value continue to be redefined by business, consumers and society, the demand is fueled for business to demonstrate its ability to create value for all its stakeholders, rather than simply profit for shareholders. The question of how this value is defined, measured and communicated is the topic of our 2nd annual conference on The New Metrics of Sustainable Business – September 27-28, 2012, at The Wharton School in Philadelphia, PA. Join the Sustainable Brands community as we continue the conversation that began at New Metrics in 2011, exploring leading-edge efforts to redefine value and define smarter business metrics. This two-day, sustainable brands issues in focus event examines innovative work that expands the way business can create, quantify, manage and communicate value; measure the environmental, social and economic impacts of business activity; and find new ways to translate shared value activities into enhanced financial performance in the 21st century. Various initiatives, research and models will be presented and plenty of time devoted to interactive discussion, facilitated by some of sustainability’s top strategists. Key Topics being explored include:
7.30am: REGISTRATION Skip the ‘rush hour’ registration line by arriving early - settle in to your preferred seat for the day and get through your inbox before breakfast is served. 8.00am: BREAKFAST Meet and connect with your peers in the audience before the program starts - the conversations and interaction throughout the day will be even more valuable if you know who is in the room with you. 9.00am: OPENING REMARKS Where will sustainability differentiation come from going forward? and what metrics do smart, fast-moving companies need to understand in order to be set up to drive ongoing competitive advantage? 9.15am: BEYOND THE SCIENCE TO THE ART OF ECONOMICS Charles Eisenstein Author, Sacred Economics As you begin to consider how to translate this event’s leading-edge ideas into winning initiatives for your business, it is critical to first take a step back to ask, “how do we define success, and is our definition optimized to serve us well today, let alone for the future?” professor and author charles eisenstein kicks off our conversation with a look at how the meaning and measure of value in society are changing; provides insight into where the urge to quantify things comes from; and challenges us to think in new ways about the impact and opportunity surrounding the metrics we choose for managing business sustainably. 9.45am: UPDATING THE MEANING AND MEASURE OF VALUE FOR THE 21ST CENTURYy
Gil Friend President & CEO, Natural Logic
As a global sustainability revolution continues to unfold at an ever-increasing pace, it is crucial to stay abreast of megatrends reshaping the way societies and businesses view the world. This panel of deep big-picture thinkers looks at how value is being redefined on a personal, organizational, community and national level today, and how this might impact business tomorrow. since business metrics only matter in relation to goals, intentions and ultimately purpose, this conversation sets a high-level context for all following discussions. 10.30am: NETWORKING BREAK 10.45am: NEW HORIZONS IN MEASURING THE ROI OF SUSTAINABILLITY
Gil Friend President & CEO, Natural Logic
Cracking the code on the “roi of sustainability,” or even deciphering the very meaning of that phrase in various contexts, continues to be a challenge for many corporate leaders, investors and other stakeholders. facing heightened shareholder concerns, whether due to a global economic crisis or general skepticism, how does one best demonstrate the value of investments in sustainability? what can a company hope for, as it transitions from measuring the roi of individual projects (ex: energy efficiency) to capturing the return on a broader sustainability agenda? This panel discusses breakthrough research and modelling approaches that are proving useful in quantifying the impact of a range of sustainability efforts, including transparent disclosure, on the bottom line, stock prices, brand value, sales, risk reduction and employee value. 11.45pm: TWO CASE STUDIES ON MEASURING ROI
Robert Boller VP Sustainability and Production, Jackson Family Wines
Measuring the roi of sustainability, especially when it comes to broad, multi-aspect sustainability campaigns, can be a daunting, multi-stakeholder and data-intensive task. Thankfully, there are many encouraging examples of successful implementation and documentation of positive-roi, win-win sustainability efforts. in this session we present two such case studies, focusing on specific methodologies and results. participants share strategies used and lessons learned, and answer questions about challenges overcome along the way. 12.45pm: LUNCH BREAK 1.45pm: CREATING SHARED VALUE AND MEASURING IMPACT IN THE SUPPLY CHAIN
Ellen Jackowski Global Citizenship Report Manager, Hewlett Packard
The fundamental shift in strategic priorities that companies around the world, especially those with significant environmental and social impacts, are experiencing today is calling for a fresh look at supply chains. leading multinational companies are seizing the opportunity to re-evaluate and reinvent their supply chains for minimum damage and maximum value. New metrics are introduced to track impacts in all parts of the value chain, helping to assess and manage the choice of supply chain partners. at the same time, reimagined or entirely new channels of value creation often appear, as companies begin to serve previously unmet social and environmental needs. 2.45pm: TOOLS IN FOCUS, FACILITATING THE TRANSITION TO A SUPERIOR SUPPLY CHAIN
Jess Kraus Co-Founder & CEO, SOURCE 44
3.15pm: NETWORKING BREAK 3.30pm: UPDATES IN THE VALUATION OF ECOSYSTEM SERVICES
Michelle Lapinski Director, Corporate Practices, The Nature Conservancy
A wave of initiatives aimed at valuing and conserving ecosystem services and biodiversity is building rapidly. whether it is with the help of the Valuing Natural capital initiative, the Natural capital leadership compact, the Natural capital declaration recently signed at rio+20, or through smaller solo projects, many companies are starting to use metricsbased approaches in efforts to protect ecosystem services. This session shares details on a few such approaches, and makes a business case for their application. 4.15pm: THE VALUE OF HUMAN CAPITAL
Erin Meezan VP Sustainability, Interface
If human capital is a company’s greatest asset, then why does business-as-usual reflect it only as a liability? great question, and not one that many corporate leaders can answer confidently, especially in the united states or europe. hear how one visionary company is paving the way forward toward effective valuation of human capital. 4.45pm: IMPACT INVESTING AND ITS FUTURE IMPACT ON BUSINESS PRIORITIES
Eddie Bernhardt Managing Dir & Sr. Portfolio Mgr, SNW Asset Company
As impact investing gains momentum within the global financial community, companies large and small are trying to understand and leverage this trend for their own purposes. how might impact investing enable new corporate sustainability initiatives by changing the way we measure roi? can companies use their own investment capacity to strengthen the credibility of their sustainability story? DAY 2 - FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 9.00am: OPENING REMARKS 9.15am: STANDARDIZING SUSTAINABILITY CONTEXT
This session introduces the formal and growing embrace of the notion of sustainability context. although sustainability context is mostly associated with reporting standards, it also has broad critical applications in management and performance. The session starts with a conceptual introduction, a motivation of the urgent need to understand and appreciate sustainability context, followed by a distinguished panel of leading global experts sharing the latest relevant developments through The global initiative for sustainability ratings (gisr), The global reporting initiative (gri), The international integrated reporting council (iirc), and The sustainability accounting standards board (sasb). This session provides plenty of time for discussion. 10.30am: BREAK 10.45am: IDENTIFYING MATERIALITY IN CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY
Aleksandra Dobkowski-Joy Principal, Framework LLC
In a world with tens or even hundreds of potential environmental, social and governance issues to consider, securing high-quality relevant sustainability data - for purposes of reporting, risk assessment or general management - can quickly turn into an overwhelming and resource-draining project all by itself. Therefore, identifying materiality is by necessity a fundamental and regular exercise in corporate sustainability. This panel discusses best practices in constructing materiality rankings. 11.30am: THE SCIENCE OF HAPPINESS & HAPPINESS SURVEYS Ryan Howell Director, The Personality and Well-being Lab In a quest for reliable indicators of individual and organizational well-being, the last few years have seen a surge in research on happiness, its drivers, its relations to material possessions and money, and its impacts on health and work. an increasingly influential global group of economists, psychologists, marketers, designers and government officials are busy refining existing formulas for measuring and predicting happiness. some leading countries and businesses already publish national happiness statistics in parallel to economic figures for a more complete assessment of prosperity. This presentation helps answer the question “so what?” as you consider what goals to set and measures to adopt in your quest for a more sustainable business, digs into the design and use of happiness surveys, and examines the implications this new global focus on happiness will have on the sustainable success of business. 12.00pM: LUNCH BREAK 1.00pm: THE ROLE OF LEADING VS. LAGGING INDICATORS IN SUSTAINABILITY PLANNING
Michael Muyot President & Founder, CRD Analytics
Leading indicators of corporate operational performance can serve as a useful complement to more common results-based lagging indicators. leading indicators, however, tend not to be applied in sustainability much these days, arguably because sustainability teams often have little experience with them. This panel discusses the latest efforts to integrate leading indicators (both qualitative and quantitative) into nextgeneration sustainability reporting standards and sustainable investing indices.www.SBiif.com 1.45pm: THE CFO AGENDA: ENABLING CFOS TO SEE SUSTAINABILITY AS CENTRAL TO CORE STRATEGY Lauralee Martin CFO & COO, Jones Lang Lasalle How can sustainability managers get positive responses from their cfos on a regular basis? what combination of factors will drive cfos to understand and embrace the demands of a corporate sustainbility journey? what can cfos do to answer increasing investor pressures in favor of sustainability? These are common questions, yet too few companies seem to have satisfactory answers. To help with this agenda, we are joined by a forward-thinking cfo who has been tackling these problems for years. 2.i5pm: INCENTIVIZING AND VALUING EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
Robert Kerr Co-founder & Principal, Pure Strategies
Even the best and brightest of corporate leaders might fail, if their employees aren’t committed and inspired enough to drive a sustainability strategy forward. embedding the right incentives across the organization, whether by adjusting employees’ reward structures, implementing environmental accounting by department or redesigning feedback loops, has been proven essential time and again. The case studies presented in this session share cutting-edge, metrics-based innovation in incentivizing sustainable employee behavior, top-down as well as bottom-up. 3.15pm: NETWORKING BREAK 3.45pm: TOOLS IN FOCUS: LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENTS FOR SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY
J. Renée Morin President, PRE Consultants North America
Over the last 20 years, methods have been developed to support product sustainability assessments, but with a focus on environmental impacts; only minimal attention has been given to social impacts. learn how several companies are working to harmonize an approach for evaluating the social impact on key groups - employees, consumers and communities - involved along the value chain. hear from dsM how it has further defined social impact categories and has begun to integrate social impact evaluation into its business processes. 4.00pm: TOOLS IN FOCUS: ONE MAGIC NUMBER TO SUM UP ALL YOUR RESOURCE INPUTS Ory Zik Founder & CEO, Energy Points Energy Points brings to sustainability what weight watchers brought to nutrition: an intiutitive yet accurate ‘points’ system. it is based on algorithms that enable one-to-one comparison of resources such as electricity, fuel, materials, water and transportation, taking into account local factors such as emissions and water scarcity. The company’s core competency is translating this complexity into a simple metric that enables optimal environmental decisions. 4.15pm: THE EVOLUTION OF SUSTAINABILITY STANDARDS
Libby Bernick Vice President, UL Environment
It is easy for a sustainability professional to get lost in a quickly expanding sea of proposals for sustainability standards, be they for purposes of reporting, certification or comparison across companies and industries. as we close New Metrics ‘12, we’ll discuss where sustainability standards may be heading and why, and tackle the question, “how should a business determine what relevant standards initiatives to support and/or apply for?”
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| The text being discussed is available at http://www.sustainablebrands.com/sites/default/files/docs/sbiif12-program.pdf |