A regular blog about (un) sustainable business. A focus on practical stuff, not blue sky pretentious waffle. Around 6000 regular readers, surprisingly.
Ioannis Ioannou, associate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at London Business School, provides an excellent overview of how expectation and performance around responsible business is evolving. Our forthcoming events How business can tackle modern slavery and forced labour - 7-8 March 2018 - London How business can make smallholder supply chains resilient - 13-14 March…
It’s important for global investors to learn to address and model supply chain risks if they wish to achieve financial outperformance, argues Gabriel Thoumi, director of capital markets at Climate Advisers. He makes the points well, alongside NSF’s Meredith Reisfield at a recent event in the US. ValueWalk Video: Managing Investor Expectations & Risk – How to…
Just a quick note on the upcoming Innovation Forum: Sustainable apparel: How brands can transform supply chains (24th-25th April 2018,Amsterdam). Through focused discussion, this two-day conference, our third annual event on this topic, will address the most pressing issues in the apparel industry. It will equip delegates with the best-practice and know-how relating to the biggest…
Last week I published this post about what brands might do as zero deforestation approaches are seen to need re-working, given we are 1000 days or so away from some big stated deadlines. That post is linked below, as is a response by Anita Neville from Golden-Agri Resources. Now, again below, is some further commentary…
One of the things people find annoying about online comments and letters sections, is so few people see substantive responses to original postings. So here I’m posting one below, after my recent post: “Response to my post: 1000 days to go…the six most difficult questions for consumer brands around ‘zero’ deforestation palm oil by 2020“….
Palm oil is much in the news again early in 2018, with headlines appearing such as: EU heading for ‘zero palm oil’ in transport by 2021 Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand ready to retaliate on EU palm oil ban Palm oil: Malaysia can argue for exclusion from European ban Proposed ban on palm oil: Felda to…
The coverage of the Trump administration’s roll-back, or attempted roll-back, of social and environmental regulations is well documented. But are there some benefits to his election? It could be that I’m looking for a silver lining here, and I liked the idea of a bit of a clickbait headline. But also I think there is some…
Happy New Year to all readers, and I hope you had a restful festive break. I was in rural Somerset with the family, where it rained a lot, but the local food and (mostly imported) wines were superb. Part of my New Year resolutions (along with more gym, fewer carbs and glasses of wine in…
Sabine Benoit and Julia Hartmann at the Surrey Business School at the University of Surrey have been researching consumer perception of sustainability in supply chains (video here) They have been researching the question of whom consumers hold responsible and blame in case of irresponsible supplier behaviour and the subsequent reactions in consumer behaviour. The publication that’s the foundation of…
Cocoa has been in the news a lot in recent years. It’s one of those soft commodities that everyone cares about and feels they have a stake in. Who doesn’t like chocolate? I spent a few days in the forests of Ghana, back in 2010, with executives from what is now Mondelēz (then Cadbury/Kraft) some years…
If, like me, you have a folder on your desktop with 20-50 unread 80-120 page reports on sustainable commodities, you may find a shorter, sharper version of many of the issues and solutions in this area, quite useful. So here’s a link to one, written by Climate Focus and published by TFA 2020. It’s something…
Here below are some recent analysis and podcasts from us at Innovation Forum. It’s all free. You don’t need to register or anything. Just click and enjoy. We’ve got a lot coming up in the second half of 2017 and if you enjoy our analysis, please consider attending one of our events and supporting our…
As some readers may know, business and human rights, and forced labor and human trafficking are a big area of focus for us at Innovation Forum. I recall first hosting a conference on this topic in 2003, and much has changed since, at least in terms of awareness. Looking at that 2003 agenda, here you can…
Here’s some of the interviews, insight and analysis, recently added to https://innovation-forum.co.uk The below is a mixture of written and audio content, usually recorded at/around our events from the first half of 2017. I hope there’s some useful insights here somewhere for readers. Happy summer break to all! HSBC’s noble stand on palm oil No…
Last month we wrapped our final conference of the first half of 2017, during which we covered smallholder farmer sustainability, sustainable apparel, deforestation prevention, and tackling modern slavery and forced labour, (in both London and D.C), measuring sustainability processes and outcomes. All our conferences are held under the Chatham House rule of non-disclosure, but here are…
I'm Toby Webb, founder of Innovation Forum, a sustainability focused research, publishing and events business. I've also been a lecturer on Corporate Responsibility at Kings College London and at Birkbeck, University of London for eight years. I work with large companies all over the world and sit on the sustainability advisory board for Walgreens Boots Alliance. From 2006-9 I lead the development of UK CSR policy, resulting in the Responsibility Deals framework. I can be contacted at Tobias DOT Webb AT innovation-forum.co.uk
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