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Peter Burgess

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Reflections on Sustainability at the DuPont Executive Forum

Monica Morrow Global Digital Marketing Leader at DuPont Sustainable Solutions

In late September, we hosted the DuPont Executive Forum in Dubai, along with over 150 CEOs and senior executives.

This event proved rather enlightening, so we wanted to share some of the reflections on how sustainability was considered by this prestigious group.

For full details, you can read the Executive Summary from the Safety and Sustainability Forum here: http://bit.ly/1dyWrKA

The focus of the discussion, as opposed to other conferences, was not WHY companies must embrace sustainability and the perceived benefits of sustainability, but HOW you achieve it, and how to balance sustainability with other business objectives. Discussions revolved around operationalizing sustainability, and creating value - financial, social and environmental - through concrete initiatives. Mobilization of resources was identified as particularly difficult, especially as it relates to people. We saw that many leaders have been moving beyond a focus on short-term profits (and they need to bring their board and their organization along with them).

One of the key solutions highlighted was strong leadership and culture. Another was that intra- and inter-industry collaboration is vital to success, and is a particularly effective driver of innovation.

We will share some video coverage of the conference in the coming days, but in the meantime, please do share any thoughts you may have on this topic.

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Peter Burgess

Peter Burgess commented on Reflections on Sustainability at the DuPont Executive Forum

I want to give DuPont credit for being interested in sustainability, something they started doing way before it became 'fashionable'.

I wish, however, that the experts would look at sustainability with the same rigor that the corporation looks at profit performance. There are strong metrics throughout every business organization to keep track of profit performance, and everything to do with this is monitored with considerable rigor.

When it comes to sustainability, the metrics are somewhere between very weak and non-existent. The one thing I am be certain of is that whenever there is a conference about sustainability that serious discussion of metrics will be missing.

To some extent I understand why the corporate world is not embracing strong meaningful metrics about sustainability. Most of what has been proposed in the area of metrics is very costly and not very effective. It is reasonable not to embrace something that is costly and won't work. In my view, this is because the approaches to metrics that are being pursued are merely fiddling at the margin of the existing system of money profit accounting and economics.

Something different is needed, and I think I am getting close to something that will work really well. I call it Multi Dimension Impact Accounting (MDIA) and I hope in due course it will be a game changer.

When you change the way the game is scored, you change the way the game is played.

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