In the 1993 book “The Ecology of Commerce” (revised in 2010), Paul Hawken wrote about the growing social, economic and environmental crises facing humanity and declared that business and industry is the only sector of society large enough, powerful enough and flexible enough to lead us out of the messes we have created toward a restorative and regenerative future.
The late great Ray Anderson, founder and CEO of Interface, read Hawken’s book and wrote in his excellent and inspiring 2008 book “Business Lessons From a Radical Industrialist” that Hawken’s message “was a call to lead and a call to hope, loud and clear and powerful enough to energize a corporation and, with any luck, start a chain reaction throughout industry — not just ours, all of industry. A vision certainly big enough to give me a new purpose in life.”
Anderson’s efforts at Interface led him to conclude that “sustainability has proven to be the most powerful marketplace differentiator in my long career.”
So where do things stand nearly 30 years later? The chain reaction Anderson wrote about has moved too slowly, but things are happening and picking up speed.
It has been said that we are motivated by either aspiration or desperation. Both motivations are catalyzing CEOs to embrace sustainability for the future of their organizations and the economy.
For example, The Risky Business Project was founded in 2013 by Michael Bloomberg, Hank Paulson and Tom Steyer “to assess and publicize the economic risks to the U.S. associated with climate change.” Their motivation? Concerns that the U.S. is not paying enough attention to this growing threat.
In contrast, former Unilever CEO Paul Polman has co-founded IMAGINE, an organization that “works with courageous CEOs to put their companies in service of the world and thrive as a result… We help build net-positive companies, which succeed by giving more than they take and we help build industry-wide collectives to deliver change at speed and scale.”
Fortune Magazine quotes George Oliver, CEO of Johnson Controls, as saying “I would have predicted that a crisis like COVID would have slammed the brakes on anything other than conventional bottom-line thinking. The fact that it did the exact opposite is extraordinary. It has accelerated the trajectory of sustainability.”
Businesses need employees in sales and marketing, supply chain, R&D, operations and finance who understand the ethics and principles of sustainability and can apply them. Graduates equipped with these capacities will have a growing competitive advantage in the job market.
Mike Kensler
Director
Office of Sustainability
