what i learned about sustainability at rei
DESCRIPTION
This is a talk I will deliver for MBA students at Darden School of Business University of Virginia. I hope to share some lessons from my experience leading Sustainable Business strategy and Corporate Social Responsibility at REI for the past 7 years.TRANSCRIPT
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What I learned about Sustainability
at REI
@KevinHagenwww.KevinHagenCSR.org
April 2013
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What is Sustainable Business?
A more powerful way of thinking about how enterprise creates and delivers value to customers
“Do the right thing” can be a trap, not a sustainable business strategy
MORE OF THE STORY
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Slide courtesy of Bob Willard www.sustainabilityadvantage.com
Organizations transition through a
series of stages moving from conventional thinking to
sustainable business thinking.
How do you get there?
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1: Abundance over Scarcity
Sustainable Business is not the opposite of conventional thinking – it is a different way of looking at the world.
Rather than scarcity we see abundance
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2: Metrics over IntuitionIntuition formed through conventional business success is likely to reinforce blind spots.
Rigorous, timely sustainability metrics can reveal new opportunities and hidden risks
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3: Incremental and Breakthrough
Incremental improvements deliver near term returns and train us to see more opportunity.
Radical incrementalism can result.
Break-through changes are needed to move from “doing less bad” to “achieving more good”
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4: Innovation over Trade-offs
Sustainable business is not about better balance
To accept either/or thinking results in compromise
Holding higher expectations to deliver environmental/ social and economic results drives innovation and business success
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5: Systems over Silos
• Sustainability is a successful system.
• Breakthroughs come from radical collaboration
• The goal is achieving more good, not simply less bad
• There comes a time to get out of the way
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More on Sustainable Business and
Corporate Social Responsibility
www.KevinHagenCSR.org
@KevinHagenApril 2013