A regular blog about (un) sustainable business. A focus on practical stuff, not blue sky pretentious waffle. Around 6000 regular readers, surprisingly.
Hello readers, I hope you are all well and pushing through to the end of the year successfully. At Innovation Forum, we’ve got two conferences left this year, on Nov 21-22 on how business can tackle deforestation and then on sustainable sugarcane with Bonsucro on Dec 1-2. Both of them are in London and I…
It seems to me that Anglo-Saxon capitalism and globalisation has failed millions of people. In two recent episodes (one barely needs to name them as the Brexit vote and the US election result) many of these citizens decided to vote decisively in protest, for what they hope is change. When you have little to lose, you are…
At Innovation Forum, we held another of our conferences last week. We brought together about 160 company executives, NGOs, government agencies and other experts to debate the thorny topics in the title of this post. Here’s a few of the bullet notes I took that sum up some of the key questions companies taking part are…
Big companies often find it hard to come across as sincere. When it comes to difficult social and environmental issues, doing so is even more difficult. So when you come across an example or two of companies taking on a challenging social or environmental issue and communicating in a compelling way, it’s worth stopping to…
Here’s two short videos I taped a couple of years ago on the history of CSR and sustainable business. Each is about five minutes and they were the most popular ones on the online course I used to run with Mallen Baker (at least, out of the videos I taped) I have given this as a…
Does the internet REALLY need another listicle, I hear you ask? Probably not. But readers do click on stuff like this, hence the headline. I think it’s because you know it’s not going to be very long (or deep) and you might have time to get to the end. My guesswork aside, this listicle (it’s better…
Hopes are high for CRISPR, an emerging genetic technology that has been called “ground-breaking”, “jaw-dropping” and a potential boon for sustainable agriculture. CRISPRs – clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats – are DNA sequences that can be used like scalpels to edit genomes, the genetic material of living things. Using the technique, precise cuts can…
In case you missed our webinar on human rights risk management with Thai Union, Nestle and Intel that took place last Friday, you can find the webinar recording here to listen to at your leisure: http://bit.ly/2bIWuXy Also, we are running two relevant conferences on human rights and business in London and Washington DC that may be of…
Dearest reader, I hope you are rather well, Innovation Forum is holding a complimentary webinar on human rights risk management approaches with Intel, Nestle and Thai Union this Friday. We’d like to invite you to join in. The webinar is taking place this Friday 19th August. The discussion will explore collaboration and partnership approaches being…
I wrote in my recent post: Should business defend environmental and human rights campaigners? that I would pen a follow up on this difficult question. In that post I tried to make the case for deciding your business should defend campaigners where your values align with theirs. In this one I want to talk about what that looks…
Here below are four recent podcasts we taped at events we at Innovation Forum held earlier this year. The focus is all about smallholder farmers and how companies can better engage them, tackle capacity challenges, improve yields and overcome the limits to certification. (Many more podcasts can be found here) And this upcoming conference should…
The US government has recognised improvements in tackling trafficking in Thailand’s seafood sector, but the endemic labour abuses will be tough to eradicate From Innovation Forum’s weekly business newsletter. Sign up free at: http://innovation-forum.co.uk In issuing its updated Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, the US Department of State upgraded the country from a “tier 3” to “tier 2”…
Big food and FMCG brands and retailers have set important and game-changing targets in sustainable agriculture. Achieving these are amongst the biggest challenges that companies face in the next decade. Much has been done in recent years, but we’re a long way from overall success. So how will companies get there ‘on time’? Which techniques,…
At Innovation Forum we’re now helping companies understand risk in a cost effective way, that’s not just through edgy, focused conferences which get to the heart of the issues. Several companies has asked us to provide them with a quarterly, cost effective risk briefing service via PDF report, and face to face meetings. These focus…
Here’s the latest of the podcast series Scott Poynton, founder of TFT (The Forest Trust) and I are doing this year. In this edition we talked about the demise of the Indonesian Palm Oil Pledge, the IOI vs. RSPO lawsuit closure, Resolute vs. Greenpeace (briefly), why talking to critics is really the best way. We…
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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