A regular blog about (un) sustainable business. A focus on practical stuff, not blue sky pretentious waffle. Around 6000 regular readers, surprisingly.
Public speaking varies considerably, so I’ll stick in this post to proferring unsolicited advice on speaking at business conferences. Speaking is probably the wrong word. Contributing critically, thoughtfully and pragmatically would be a better, if lengthier term. Based on my experience of creating, running/chairing business conferences since 1999 (I think the total is probably well…
Hello there. Innovation Forum would like to invite you to the upcoming webinar: How brands can drive sustainable innovation in plastics and packaging The webinar will take place on Thursday 6th September at 9am EDT / 2pm BST. If you can’t make that time, register anyway and we’ll send you a recording. You can sign…
By Chris Eves, forestry officer at the Zoological Society of London Speaking recently, Christophe Deloire, secretary general of Reporters Without Borders, stated that: “None of the main issues which humanity is facing will be resolved without access to information”. With 2017 the second worst year on record for tropical tree cover loss, now is a good…
I haven’t posted on here for a while. We’ve been busy publishing on the main Innovation Forum site, which has hugely increased traffic in the last few months. We think this is due to our audio content, which is proving extremely popular, we think because a) its pretty good and b) its a flexible format…
Innovation Forum’s Modern slavery, forced labour and human rights: The business case beyond compliance takes place on 18th-19th October 2018 in London. This forum is designed to provide the practical tools to protect human rights and mitigate the risk of abuses in company supply chains. The two day discussion will equip business delegates with the guidance to develop and…
Trade “wars” (actually skirmishes) are all over the news at the moment. Alongside the political posturing of Trump and his economically-unhinged cohorts, there may be, as mentioned before on this blog, a sustainability-related one brewing too. I’m referring, of course to palm oil, the EU and deforestation. This headline from the Asia Times gives you…
Here’s what we’re up to for the rest of 2018 @ Innovation Forum. Plastics, Modern Slavery, Landscapes and Commodities, Measurement and ROI conferences in London, Amsterdam, Detroit: How business can measure the impact – and ROI – of corporate sustainability How to make the business case to your board, define materiality, and measure the impacts…
Reading this from WEF, “Are you breathing plastic air at home? Here’s how microplastics are polluting our lungs”, all it needs is a few credible studies to confirm this, and global textile, home furnishing and manufacturers could have a major issue on their hands, and fast. Research needed into scope of the problem, and viable…
It’s not often I sit down to write a post that could well annoy almost everyone I know. This is one of those. But it’s a risk worth taking. Someone needs to say, I think, what I am going to say here. Scott Poynton blogged about this area recently, and I had the same conversation…
First, and for a long time, we had philanthropy, and there was no need to measure that, except in cash given, and tax breaks received. Then we had early CSR, let’s say at some point in the 1980s, and that was about happier communities, some more motivated employees, the odd bit of PR and some…
Chris Meyer from the Environmental Defense Fund has put together an insightful blog post on the above topic, which is particularly timely, given this week is the TFA 2020 AGM in Accra, Ghana, where I am moderating a panel session on scaling up zero deforestation initiates, with speakers from Golden Agri Resources and Mondelez. I’ve…
For the last two years, we at Innovation Forum have held conferences on this above topic in Washington D.C. Firstly with the Pew Centre and in 2018 with the Nature Conservancy, at their offices in Arlington. Thank you for the support to both organisations. Here’s some of the anonymised notes from the conference. A couple…
As you might know, we love a good old podcast at Innovation Forum. We find they get a lot more interest and listens/downloads than text articles, perhaps because they are convenient, and human-centered. So here’s quite a few we’ve taped recently, with executives from leading companies and other experts, on a whole host of sustainability…
Later in 2018, we’re convening a meeting about plastics and sustainability in Amsterdam. So what? You might say, you and everyone else, too. Well, yes, good point you might raise, but our plan is a different one. We don’t seek to demonise plastics, as so many are doing right now. We’re taking a more nuanced…
As some readers and customers of Innovation Forum may know, we’ve been running conferences on various supply chain issues since we started. To date, we’ve run around 10-12 events per year in recent years, and perhaps 30 since we started in 2014. These are generally events of 80-150 business folks, NGOs, and others, over two…
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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