Leadership

Intrapreneurs are Passionate Change Agents: How to Nurture them from Within

How can leaders act to ensure the passion and compassion of social intrapreneurs are allowed to blossom in big business?

Cafe Terrace on Rue Vieille du Temple

Cultivate a cafe culture: create time and space to talk about what is happening in the wider world and how your business can be a force for good in it. Photograph: Ludovic Maisant/Hemis/Corbis

The combination of passion and compassion creates a powerful force for positive change. There are always plenty of both on offer at the annual get-together of the hundreds of social entrepreneurs who attend the Skoll World Forum in Oxford, which ended last week.

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Also posted in Behaviour Change, Business and Sustainability, Capitalism 2.0, Culture Change, Employee Engagement, Organizational Change, Organizational Culture | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

It’s Wrong to Profit from Wrecking the Planet: College Students Agree

Img_1701_2“It’s wrong to profit from wrecking the planet.”

That’s what thousands of young people are saying across the U.S. who are demanding their colleges and universities strip fossil fuel investments from their endowment portfolios.

They are arguing with passion — and a considerable amount of organizing savvy — that the still untapped 2795 gigatons of fossil fuel reserves energy companies own must be left in the ground. Why? Because burning it will cook the planet — raising temperatures 6 degrees Centigrade or more, three times what scientists have determined is the level needed to avert runaway climate chaos.

It’s a message that is profoundly counterintuitive to capitalist culture.

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Also posted in Capitalism 2.0, Climate change, Renewable Energy, Thought Leader | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Can you name a responsible company? 5 quick ways to identify a leader

detective-300x231A recent report by GlobeScan published some interesting findings – “significant numbers of survey respondents around the world cannot or will not name a single socially responsible company when asked, and this proportion appears to be rising in many countries.”

This is a worldwide phenomenon in both developing and developed countries.  Large numbers of people can’t name a socially responsible company. In India for example it’s 57 percent, while in the U.S., it’s 39 percent. Read More »

Also posted in Green certifications, Green Communications, Sustainability Metrics, Sustainability Reporting | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Big businesses must adapt or disappear – Capitalism 2.0 will not be kind to the laggards!

Global Business Coalition Meeting With Secretary-General Ban Ki-MoonA summit hosted by Sir Richard Branson and Jamie Oliver calls for a radical rethink of traditional business models.

A gathering of sustainability leaders hosted by Sir Richard Branson and Jamie Oliver has been warned that big businesses will be swept aside by emerging social enterprises unless they start changing their business models and contribute more to society.

Boudewijn Poelmann, who founded the hugely successful Dutch Postcode Lottery, which now operates in Sweden and the UK, said that many major businesses would disappear over the next 20 years, to be replaced by emerging social enterprises, unless they took off their blinkers and responded to the environmental and social challenges the world is facing.

“Small companies that are passionate about creating change will take over if big companies do not adapt,” he said. “We already see that with energy, with so many small companies producing sustainable clean energy. The big companies are already starting to feel they are losing out.”

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Also posted in Behaviour Change, Business and Sustainability, Capitalism 2.0, Organizational Culture, Social and Environmental Impacts, Thought Leader | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Look to the Cities for Climate Change Leadership

Matyas LukacsThis article explores the reasons why Canada and the United States have failed to implement meaningful climate policies at the federal level. It then discusses the critical role that municipalities can play in picking up the slack, along with some of the challenges and opportunities that lie in their way.  These ideas will be dicussed in greater detail at the upcoming TSSS event on Cities and Climate Change” - see below.

Why North America Has Failed to Act on Climate at the Federal Level

Environment Minister Peter Kent recently announced that Canada will stay in line with the United States on the issue of climate change. The justification for this is all too familiar: we cannot afford to have fundamentally different climate policies because our economies are so intertwined – straying too far would result in financial repercussions and never-ending legal and diplomatic disputes. At least for the foreseeable future, it is unlikely that Canada will jump the gun on climate policy.1

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Also posted in Climate change | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment
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