KnowNOW!

Global Economic Watch

Syndication

Recent Posts

Tags

View more

Other Useful Blogs

Archives

  • Richard Wilkinson on 'The Spirit Level'

    On the current hot topic of inequality, Richard Wilkinson has been among the most influential researchers. Wilkinson, who straddled fields like economics and sociology in his work as professor of social epidemiology at the University of Nottingham , is best known here in the US for his book, Spirit Levels. In The Spirit Level , Wilkinson and co-author Kat Pickett lay out the data that they say shows the lower the income gap for a nation, the healthier that nation is--economically, socially, and medically. In a recent TedTalk , Wilkinson made his case:

  • Engaging Customers in Green Initiatives

    There are many reasons for a business to work to be more "green." But in this day and age businesses want credit for making the effort to build and follow sustainable practices. That means making sure customers understand the aims and the process for going green. To this end, Kelly Spors recommends getting customers to participate in the initiatives. And in a post for Small Business Trends she advises these four approaches: 1. Use social media to talk about green. 2. Donate a portion of profits to charity. 3. Give customers an easy way to help. 4. Inspire them to go beyond. Read 4 Ways to Engage Your Customers in Your Green Efforts here .

  • Carnegie Council Workshop on Global Business Ethics and Emerging Markets

    As a multinational corporation grows it expands into new markets. And each market is different, with its own business culture, traditions, rules. And some emerging markets bring some shady business practices. Okay, all markets likely bring shady business practices. So how and where does a multinational draw the line between doing what it takes to expand and dealing with corrupt partners? The Carnegie Council recently hosted a workshop on corruption in emerging markets with William O'Rourke, Jr. -- Alcoa 's vice president for Sustainability and Environment, Health & Safety (EHS). In this brief excerpt from the workshop, O'Rourke says that first step in dealing with an ethical breach, or a possible ethical breach, is to take a deep breath and gather all the facts: Watch the full workshop here .

  • The Story Behind Bloomberg's Environmental, Social, and Governance Data

    If you have a Bloomberg terminal in your office then you are able to access all sorts of data on companies. And for the last couple of years you have been able to see ESG data on companies. ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance. And, according to Fast Company 's Paul Tullis , the ESG ratings were added after Bloomberg's susatainability director, Curtis Ravenel, stumbled across such ratings while working to make Bloomberg's operations more green . Ravenel came across an increasing number of clients (mainly in Europe, Tullis notes) that wanted more sustainability data. But not for egalitarian reasons. Tullis writes: If a company treats its employees well, for instance, it should have less turnover and lower HR costs; if a manufacturer gets serious about safety, it can avoid expensive lawsuits. There's increasing evidence -- and, correspondingly, a growing belief among portfolio managers -- that companies taking such factors into account are forward-thinking and well managed, and therefore places investors should consider. The biggest indicator in the ESG matrix right now is environmental impact. "The financial community likes the E because it's easy to quantify," Ravenel says. "And within E is the big C: carbon." And within that C is another C: cost. Some European countries, such as Sweden and Denmark, tax the carbon emissions of companies with offices there. The EPA's rules to regulate CO2, which went into effect January 2nd, will affect many American balance sheets. If companies wake up one day to find it costs $15 to emit a ton of CO2, a financial analyst considering ExxonMobil would see it emitted 128 million metric tons in 2009. That adds nearly $2 billion to the oil giant's operating costs -- hardly extra-financial data. Ravenel used this kind of argument to persuade Bloomberg to add ESG data to its terminals. His team spent countless hours assembling and entering data into the system (often by hand) before going live in July 2009. Today, when Bloomberg's 300,000 market-savvy customers turn on their terminals in the morning, they can see ESG data such as greenhouse-gas intensity per sales, water usage, employee fatalities, toxic discharge, and more than 100 other indicators as part of their basic package alongside the rest of the Wall Street alphabet soup. (The ESG data does not cost extra.) And investors are using it: In the second half of 2010, 5,000 unique customers in 29 countries accessed more than 50 million ESG indicators via Bloomberg's screens -- a 29% increase over the first half of last year. "We expect that trend to continue," Ravenel says. Read Bloomberg's Push for Corporate Sustainability here .

  • Majora Carter on Eco-Entrepreneurship

    Local entrepreneurs may be the people best able to help turn around struggling neighborhoods. Majora Carter earned national attention, and a MacArthur grant, for her work pushing for environmentally friendly development in the South Bronx. Now she is a leading national figure in the movement for sustainable economic development in cities across the country. In her speech at the TedX Midwest conference last fall, Carter spoke about some of the people who have applied entrepreneurial thinking in working to revive their communities economically and make them healthier, more sustainable environments.

  • WWF's Clay on Competitors Working Together for Long Term Sustainability

    Jason Clay is a vice president at WWF, and he works with corporations in an effort to find more sustainable production processes. He says WWF's research shows that we are "living in about 1.3 planets." One potential solution is to make sure all products are made sustainability, Clay argues, and he says that the way to make that happen is to make sustainability a "pre-competitive" issues. That means competitors working together on tackling some big consumption challenges--much as Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, and Tim Horton's are teaming up to develop a new coffee cup . Here is Clay making the case for big brands as the potential saviors for biodiversity and sustainability, and sharing some examples of big companies that are working the problem (Cargill, Mars, Coca-Cola) at a recent TedTalk:

  • Achieving Sustainability

    Sustainability has become a buzzword in B-schools and board rooms, though at times it seems the word has different meaning for different people. Erik Rasmussen , CEO of the Copenhagen Climate Council , argues that it is the business world that can move sustainability from a topic of discussion to a reality. After all, he asks, "Who wants to work for a non-sustainable company?" Here is Rasmussen discussing business sustainability with Big Think :

  • Sustainable Models for Cities and Business in the 21st Century

    Harvard Business School professor Robert Eccles is interested in firms that are working on ways to retrofit and restart urban centers. In this excerpt from an interview with Big Think , Eccles discusses a company named Living PlanIT and its "radical business model": Watch the full interview here .

  • Copenhagen, Climate Policy Costs, and Looking for the 'Green Innovation Machine'

    Global economic and policy leaders--along with a lot of politicians, of course--are in Copenhagen this week to try to hash out new international policy on fighting the effects of climate change. Whatever they come up with is likely to have a substantial price tag, and much of the current negotiations, John Broder reports in the New York Times , are over how to pay for any plan, and specifically how to help developing countries pay so that they go along: Many poor nations are insisting that wealthier nations make deeper cuts in their emissions and contribute more money to help the poorer countries, a split that widened in Copenhagen on Tuesday as competing documents of a potential agreement circulated. Over time, some of the hundreds of billions of dollars the poorer countries are demanding will begin to flow, as global carbon markets become established and governments in rich countries begin to open the spigot of public spending. But in the meantime, the industrialized countries have proposed a relatively modest fund of about $10 billion a year for each of the next three or four years to help poorer countries adapt. Even that effort remains the subject of conflict over which countries should contribute how much, what body should oversee the spending and how to determine which projects qualify for finance . Meanwhile, Philippe Aghion , David Hemous , and Reinhilde Veugelers write today at Voxeu.org about the unfulfilled promise, so far, of a "green innovation machine." From 2001-2006, according to their study, only 2% of patent applications worldwide were for environment related technologies. If the cost of government action is going to be offset by economic growth, this trend needs to change quickly: The private green innovation machine is not up to the challenge. It needs government intervention to address a combination of environmental and knowledge externalities. Economists have long emphasised the importance of carbon prices as policy instrument to use. Properly factoring in directed technological change, i.e. taking into account that research will be directed to the most profitable projects, delivers new insights for the green policy agenda. Building on an endogenous growth model on innovation and environment developed by Acemoglu , Aghion, Bursztyn, and Hemous (2009), we discuss how government intervention should be designed to effectively turn on the private green innovation machine and, more generally, to fight climate change at the lowest possible cost for growth. Researchers choosing to direct their innovation activities at improving either clean or dirty technologies will typically target innovation towards the most profitable sector, taking into account the current state of technology in both sectors and government taxes and subsidies. In this directed-innovation perspective, governments need to address not only the standard environmental externality but also imperfections in the research sector, particularly those whereby past advances in old, dirty technologies make future production and innovation in clean sectors relatively less profitable. This introduces a new cost-benefit analysis to policy intervention. The cost of supporting the cleaner technology is slower economic growth while innovation switches from the more technologically advanced dirty sector to the technologically immature clean sector. These costs will be born initially. It will take a certain period before these losses will be recovered through their benefits in the form of higher and cleaner growth, once the clean sector is innovating. Read Kick-starting the green innovation machine here .

  • Rosabeth Moss Kanter on Big Companies as a Force for Progress

    Rosabeth Moss Kanter has a great deal of faith in "vanguard corporations" and their ability to adapt to a change and create a better world. In her new book, SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good , she writes about how she sees companies like IBM, Banco Real, and Proctor & Gamble as global innovators that focus on the social good as well as profits. She discussed her book with Sarah Green of Harvard Publishing:

  • Schwarzenegger on Clean Tech and Green Business

    California's economy continues to struggle. But it does not appear that the difficult economic conditions are going to slow down Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger 's climate change ambitions. Three years ago, he signed the California Global Warming Solutions Act into law. With a little over a year left in office, Schwarzenegger told the Commonwealth Club that the Golden State will lead the way in developing a model of a "green economy" --a new "California Gold Rush" if you will. He says a "wave of green innovation" is sweeping across California, and he praises the public-private partnerships that are bringing this about. The Governor's speech is below--skip to 15:00 to get to the where he discusses the economic potential for clean technologies:

  • Max Cuellar: Change the Lightbulbs Now--The Benefits of Sustainable Business

    Max Cuellar of Booz & Company says that a set of factors will inevitably force companies to seek "green" and "sustainable" approaches to business, so the best move is to get out in front of those demands and make changes now: Cuellar spoke as part of a Carnegie Council conference titled Sustainable Branding: A U.S.-Japan Corporate Dialogue. You can find more information on the conference here .

  • 'Finding New Shoots of Growth' at World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting of New Champions

    With the economic landscape decidedly different from a year ago, many economists and policy leaders are trying to determine where the sectors of growth will be moving forward. Jeffrey Sachs is among those who believes that sustainable technology and "green" investments are the best hope. He writes in today's Guardian that the recession and the slow recovery ahead gives us "the historic opportunity – and need – to compensate for low consumer spending with increased investment spending on sustainable technologies": The crisis can yet be an opportunity to turn from a path of financial bubbles and excessive consumption to a path of sustainable development. In fact, seizing this opportunity is the only recipe for genuine growth that we have left. At the World Economic Forum 's Annual Meeting of New Champions in Dalian, China, the search for new engines of growth became a central theme, and many of the panels--video for which is now available here --focused on business in the new economic climate. The panel titled Finding the New Shoots of Growth included Marwan M. Boodai, Chief Executive Officer, Boodai Corporation, Kuwait; Liu Jiren, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Neusoft Corporation, People's Republic of China; Deepak Puri, Chairman and Managing Director, Moser Baer, India; Iqbal Survé, Executive Chairman, Sekunjalo Investments, South Africa; James S. Turley, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ernst & Young; and Wan Gang, Minister of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China. Wan set the tone by discussing sustainable technologies--along with other areas like biotechnology and information technology. So the Chinese minister appears to be on the same page as Sachs. Here's the panel discussion:

  • IBM's Corporate Social Responsibility Leader Pushes Innovation as Means to Solve Golbal Problems

    IBM 's Jeffrey Hittner says "sustainability and profit go hand in hand." And if a business wants to be a global leader, according to Hittner, there are ethical concerns that go along with driving growth. With a "more intelligent world," Hittner, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Leader for the IBM Global Business Services, puts his company forward as just one example of business being at the forefront of using innovative business practices to address global challenges. Here he is speaking with Devin Stewart of the Carnegie Council : You can listen to a longer version of the interview here .

  • Going Green During the Downturn

    Andrew Winston , author of Green Recovery , says going green during the recession is sound business, and may help assure that a company is poised to grow faster during economic recovery. He writes, in the Harvard Business Review , that "greening your business, and involving everyone in the process, can keep people motivated and help your company ride out the storm." I suggest approaching your people on three levels: First, support their efforts at home. Wal-Mart’s Personal Sustainability Project has allowed more than 500,000 workers to make and keep commitments to their planet and to their health by, for example, using less water or biking to work. Second, form “green teams” to harness environmental concern and tackle symbolic eco-waste around the office (for instance, by eliminating plastic water bottles). Third, and most important, encourage workers to move past this base of awareness to focus their energies on the core business. The ultimate goal, especially during a recession, is to improve your company’s performance and competitive position through green strategy. In this video from Harvard Business Publishing , Winston discusses approaches various businesses are demonstrating energy-efficient practices that are innovative and smart business:
1 2 Next >