WRI: Where is the Steve Jobs of sustainability?
The business leader with the big, disruptive ideas—and the force of will—to achieve for sustainable production and consumption what Apple’s visionary chief did for global technology and information?
This question springs strongly to mind after attending the Rio+20 conference.
Unlike the original Earth Summit 20 years earlier, business leaders were everywhere at Rio 2012. And with governments failing to make headway at the UN-led forum, there was much talk of businesses taking a greater lead in fixing the world’s environmental and development challenges.Yet apart from Unilever CEO Paul Polman (who declared, “We have to bring this world back to sanity and put the greater good ahead of self-interest”), few corporate leaders at Rio appeared ready to take up the baton. While literally hundreds of business-led initiatives were announced, most were incremental rather than transformative. And there was limited evidence that CEOs recognize that the planet is on a fundamentally unsustainable course and the window for action is closing.
Sustainable Business Pathways
That said, Rio did see real progress in a few important areas for the private sector. In particular, assuming corporations follow through, it laid foundations for more sustainable business models and scalable partnerships between companies and governments.
Here are three Rio trends that demonstrate an emerging shift in business thinking and provide a platform that smart, forward-looking CEOs should look to build on...
Continue reading by: Manish Bapna, Kirsty Jenkinson
http://www.environmental-expert.com/articles/wanted-a-steve-jobs-for-sustainability-303787
