Blog posts by Jeffrey Hollender,
featuring posts about sustainability,
social responsibility, entrepreneurship,
and more.
Recent Posts
Think You’re Good? Think Again
I recently finished reading a remarkable book by Peter Singer, The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty. It makes an unusually tough-minded assertion: I am immoral. I already know that in a world where so few have so much and so many have so little,...
A Cure for the Ailing Financial Industry
Our financial system is beset by a whole host of chronic illnesses, chief among them: gluttony, amorality, and opacity. Band-aids won't mend it; the patient requires immediate surgery. Unfortunately, we can't apply the scalpel until we X-ray these ailing financial...
Mother Nature Doesn’t Do Bailouts
"Mother Nature doesn't do bailouts." -Glenn Prickett, senior vice president at Conservation International. Thomas Friedman began a recent New York Times column by quoting from a brilliantly insightful fake 2005 story from the Onion. The article cited an employee of...
How to Sustainably Solve the Economic and Environmental Crisis
This is a long but critically important post that's based on a brilliant paper from the Sustainable Development Commission. It's written by Herman Daly, an ecological economist who pioneered sustainable development guidelines for the World Bank. The paper was adapted...
Context in a Time of Panic
The Economist recently reported that from the early 1980's to the peak last year, the financial services industry's share of total American corporate profits rose from 10% to 40%. In other words, 40 cents out of every dollar earned by every company in the entire...
My Tribe
A few nights ago, I reunited with a tribe that has shaped much of my life over the past 25 years. A tribe committed to making the world a better place through community and commitment, joy and love, passion and possibility, business and politics. At the center of the...
PepsiCo’s Pepsi Challenge
In a February article in Fortune, reporter Betsy Morris sang the praises of Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo's sophomore CEO. The piece described PepsiCo's new motto under Nooyi, "Performance with Purpose," which strives to balance "the profit motive with making healthier snacks,...
Strange Bedfellows?
Why Seventh Generation is Doing Business with Walmart’s Marketside Stores I’ve sometimes said that hell would freeze over before Seventh Generation would ever do business with Walmart. In fact, at times I've made even more strongly worded statements. Now I’ve got to...
World Economic Forum
It’s a two-hour drive from Beijing to Tianjin, which is hosting the World Economic Forum. Otherwise known as the “Summer Davos,” the Forum’s stated purpose is to improve the state of the world. I’m here to find out what that means, how it’s supposed to happen, and...
Why Education Belongs Back on the Agenda
The bleak economy has increasingly dominated the headlines. It's easy to see why, given the yo-yoing stock market and through-the-roof energy prices. But the economy's difficulties have overshadowed an equally troubling trend: since the late 1960s, U.S. high-school...
Is There a Bridge at the Edge of the World?
James Gustave Speth, co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a Yale University dean, and a former White House advisor, has written a great book that everyone concerned with the fate of the world must read. Speth takes all of us to task -- business,...
Greenwashing is Bad. Really.
Is Joel Makower right? No, he's wrong. Greenwashing is bad and it’s getting worse. First, let me provide some context. In a column for GreenBiz.com, Joel, a frequent commentator on green business issues, asks, "What, exactly, is a 'socially and environmentally...
Can We Sustain Globalization?
In February of 2008, on a trip to London for the Natural & Organic Products Exhibition, I stopped by to visit John Elkington, the founder of SustainAbility and an old friend. John has worked in the environmental and sustainable development fields since 1972. In...
Walmart & the Sins of Our Fathers
"Judge King wrote that Ms. Braun had recounted the humiliating experience of soiling herself while at work because she had not been permitted time to use the restroom." I hope that the recent ruling by a Minnesota state judge, who found that Walmart violated state...
Our Compensation Principles & Beliefs
Over the years, I have frequently spoken out against companies that preach a "we're-all-in-this-together" ethos while tolerating Austrian-Afghanistan disparities in executive-employee pay. But I have offered little in the way of a real-world solution to such...
Too Much Stuff
We simply buy too much stuff. I have more t-shirts in my closet than I could wear in several lifetimes. Yet someone always wants to give me another one. I have an iPhone, but the newest upgrade looks almost irresistible. In fact, so does the MacBook Air. Shoes, cars,...
Inventing the Future of Management: Part 5
A conversation with Google's CEO Eric Schmidt Here are outtakes from my notes on Eric Schmidt's talk at the Future of Management conference (see Part 4): "The culture defines the outcome," in reference to the products and services Google creates. "If you have enough...
Inventing the Future of Management: Part 4
Maximizing the Organization's Potential A discussion with W. L. Gore CEO Terri Kelly Last week, at Gary Hamel's Future of Management conference (see Part 3), I had a chance to sit down with Terri Kelly, CEO of W.L. Gore & Associates. While Gore, the makers of...
Inventing the Future of Management: Part 3
All of the attendees at Gary Hamel's conference on management innovation were assembled in one room (see Part 2). The entire group engaged in a dialogue during the day's first few hours. It was quite amazing that 35 highly opinionated people could (for the most part)...
Inventing the Future of Management: Part 2
It is impossible to describe all of the conversations at Gary Hamel's conference on management innovation (see Part 1). The dialogue ranged from questions on whether we had the right language to describe how to drag management into the 21st century; is "management"...
Inventing the Future of Management: Part 1
A few months ago, I received an unusual invitation. It began with, "Permit me to introduce myself. I'm Professor of Strategic Management at the London Business School, the Director of the Management Lab, and an author (Competing for the Future, The Future of...