Shared value – the idea that social issues can be incorporated into core business strategies to benefit both society and a firm’s financial success – has received renewed attention with the recent publication of Michael Porter’s article in the Harvard Business Review (I highly recommend the read). The shared value message is not very different […]
Continue readingProcurement is simply the process by which an organisation goes about acquiring goods and services. Unsurprisingly, the emphasis within most procurement departments is on price and quality. Most large businesses go through a five stage procurement process to maximise these benefits. Firstly, a sourcing decision is made by someone in the business. This person contacts […]
Continue readingSustainability is, at its core, a fundamentally strategic issue, but how many companies see it that way? If one had to rank sustainability performance on a continuum, one might see that companies could be categorised into 3 groups: they are either ‘laggards’, ‘adopters’ or ‘forerunners’. Laggards Laggards have little or no interest in the implications […]
Continue readingOur view, which is shared with most analysts, is that for the majority of businesses today intangible assets account for around 80% of value. This is in marked contrast to the situation as little as 30 years ago when the figure was 30%. Key Intangible Asset Classes Human capital is the value driven by the […]
Continue readingOver the course of the last few months my blogs have explored what it means to be a responsible company – if values can support both sustainability and financial return, perhaps even transcend the need for financial return from sustainability initiatives. I’ve observed how some companies have incorporated certain values at the heart of their […]
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