Many of you – especially those who took any courses in Marketing since 1980- will know of Michael Porter.
Even a short visit to Porter’s page on Amazon yields a wealth of recognized books on important economic and international topics.
Most of you will recognize Porter’s Five Forces.
From Wikipedia: Porter’s Five Forces
But this is not about economics or market entry. It’s about a person of Porter’s status recognizing the intersection of business and sustainability in a way that is in alignment with what we know as project managers to be true: that there are always multiple stakeholders on projects and that focusing too much on any one, although it may temporarily yield great results, may fail to align with the enterprise’s mission, and may yield very poor long-term results – economic, ecological and social.
In the video below, Porter goes over his “Big Idea” of Creating Shared Value (CSV), and differentiates it from Corporate Social Responsibility. He gives the example of ‘fair trade’ as a CSR principle which, while well-intentioned, actually isn’t sustainable itself and can only help “patch” a larger problem. CSV, he insists, will get to the root problems that the farmer is having and will equip that farmer for sustainable success rather than slightly increasing their income per kilo of product sold.
Further, and most importantly, Porter devotes a huge amount of time in this interview on the “beyond-the-altruistic” reasons that doing things that are environmentally sound are actually straightaway good business, plain and simple. This has been a point we have been making since the inception of EarthPM, borrowing from Green to Gold and other books of about 8-9 years ago and earlier.
Watch Porter, for example, at about 5:10 into the interview. Listen to him talk about how the environment an business intersect. It doesn’t take too much imagination to extrapolate what he says there to the slew of projects that would be triggered to garner the savings and gain the benefit Porter discusses.
This video (just click below to play it) is taken from a World Economic Forum interview. If you are interested in the role business plays in sustainability, you’ll find this very interesting. And if you are willing to challenge your thinking about CSR, listen to the critique that Porter has for it with an open mind.
Any comments or feedback? After all, it’s about creating shared value!
