What’s new (and exciting) about Sustainable Value Creation?

 

 

Margaret Coady
Director
Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy

August 12, 2011 -- To paraphrase the remarks of Professor Stuart Hart, author of Capitalism at the Crossroads, in his keynote address at CECP’s 2011 Corporate Philanthropy Summit: you know an idea has caught fire when buzzwords for it proliferate. With that in mind, our ears perked up at the observation by Tim McClimon, President of the American Express Foundation, in his CSR Now! blog that a new crop of buzzwords has emerged to describe the win-win opportunity waiting for companies and communities at the intersection of business interests and societal need.

Tim notes, correctly, that CECP has added to the dense thicket of terminology with the introduction of the term “Sustainable Value Creation” (published first in our 2010 report “Shaping the Future: Solving Social Problems through Business Strategy” based on research by McKinsey & Company, which we followed-up on this summer with “Business at its Best: Driving Sustainable Value Creation” co-authored with Accenture).

So, in the context of a landscape buzzing with confusing terms, what do we think is exciting about “Sustainable Value Creation”? And why did we write two reports about it?

Stephanie Strom of The New York Times Analyzes the Social Innovation Efforts of Google and PepsiCo




Charles H.  Moore
Executive Director
Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy

February 24, 2011-- As a fervent believer in the power of corporations to advance progress on societal issues, I read with great interest the sharp critique of Google DotOrg’s philanthropic track record that Stephanie Strom of The New York Times co-authored with Miguel Helft in late January of this year.  That piece enumerated the implementation challenges faced by the DotOrg business unit of Google in its quest to flex the company’s creativity and innovation toward solutions to climate change, global poverty, and global pandemics, among other pressing issues.  Those challenges ranged from a reported lack of executive leadership, difficulty integrating philanthropic staff into cross functional teams within the firm, and frustration with the long timeframe required for achieving change on societal issues.  As someone who has worked directly with the CEOs of leading companies on their philanthropic endeavors for the past ten years, I felt some sympathy for Google as I made my way through the timeline of disappointments (Google is not a member company): I know from experience that selecting the right societal issues on which to focus is deceptively hard for companies, and implementing the best of intentions related to those issues is much harder still. 

New Tool for Deciding Which Social Issue to Address:
The “Issue Ripeness” Map

 

 

Margaret Coady
Director
Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy

August 18, 2010 --– In an environment in which increasingly urgent and complex social issues run concurrently with limited corporate funding and other resources, how should companies decide where to focus philanthropically?

In a new report featuring research and CEO interviews conducted with McKinsey & Company titled Shaping the Future: Solving Social Problems through Business Strategy, CECP presents an “issue ripeness” map (found on page 22) to help companies decide where to engage for maximum business and social gain.