JOINING FORCES: COLLABORATION AND LEADERSHIP FOR SUSTAINABILITY

Recently, MIT Sloan Management Review published the above titled report.  It makes for an interesting read.  If you're working in industry, it doesn't matter your size -- sustainability isn't something you can tackle alone and in isolation.  It's something that requires collaboration -- and not just the basics of collaboration -- but meaningful effort beyond the sharing of ideas, best practices and standards.  Effort to develop and implement solutions to collectively have a bigger impact than one company, one industry, going at it alone.

"In the 2014 Sustainability Report, new research by MIT Sloan Management Review, The Boston Consulting Group and the UN Global Compact, shows that a growing number of companies are turning to collaborations — with suppliers, NGOs, industry alliances, governments, even competitors — to become more sustainable. Our research found that as sustainability issues become increasingly complex, global in nature and pivotal to success, companies are realizing that they can’t make the necessary impact acting alone.

Corporate sustainability has evolved from expressing good intentions and looking for internal operational efficiencies to addressing critical business issues involving a complex network of strategic relationships and activities. As sustainability issues have become more global and pivotal to success, companies are realizing that they can’t go it alone. Through their strategic networks, business can, and arguably must, tackle some of the toughest sustainability issues, such as access to stressed or nonrenewable resources, avoiding human rights violations in value chains or moderating climate change."

Read or download the report, here: http://sloanreview.mit.edu/projects/joining-forces/