Embracing the Future, the Next Big Step for Business
Hughey Newsome (OI), Contributing Writer
Issue date: 3/15/04 Section: News
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During the four-day break last month, many students missed the wonderful opportunity to participate in a landmark event just to our north at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business. It was there that the second annual Business Sustainability Initiative conference took place on February 27, 2004, which was co-hosted by Tuck and Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering. Members of the business community, students from area schools and members of the non-profit sector participated in the landmark event. The purpose of the conference was to explore the many advantages of pursuing and promoting sustainable development (SD) practices in business.
The day started with a morning keynote address from Steve Percy, former Chairman and CEO of BP America. In his address, Mr. Percy discussed SD as a competitive advantage. He went into depth about how BP embraced sustainable practices, in particular with its Beyond Petroleum program. His address touched on the many important aspects of these practices.
SD is not just an attempt to research cleaner fuels in order to launch a public relations campaign, but instead to directly affect the all-important "triple-bottom line" of social, human and economic returns. This "triple-bottom line" is upon which businesses will, more and more, have to measure their success. This approach will mean addressing the issue of making globalization beneficial to all mankind, not just citizens of developing nations. It also means protecting biodiversity, maintaining fragile ecological systems, thinking of goods in more cyclical models and safeguarding scarce resources needed by all people.
He outlined the many advantages that accrue to a corporation which quickly addresses these issues, which the world is being increasingly forced to face. These advantages are being able to set the standard at what you already can do, generating trust with different parties and the public, being at the table when policy changes are discussed (BP participated in the Kyoto Protocol discussions), and getting a head-start on the next technology. BP's pursuit of these advantages began in 1997 when it first launched its "Beyond Petroleum" initiative. In doing so, it took a bold move to admit that the product (fossil fuels) was part of the problems (pollution, climate change, etc.). Because BP took this landmark initiative, Perry stated that the company was in a better situation to seek the aforementioned advantages.
The day started with a morning keynote address from Steve Percy, former Chairman and CEO of BP America. In his address, Mr. Percy discussed SD as a competitive advantage. He went into depth about how BP embraced sustainable practices, in particular with its Beyond Petroleum program. His address touched on the many important aspects of these practices.
SD is not just an attempt to research cleaner fuels in order to launch a public relations campaign, but instead to directly affect the all-important "triple-bottom line" of social, human and economic returns. This "triple-bottom line" is upon which businesses will, more and more, have to measure their success. This approach will mean addressing the issue of making globalization beneficial to all mankind, not just citizens of developing nations. It also means protecting biodiversity, maintaining fragile ecological systems, thinking of goods in more cyclical models and safeguarding scarce resources needed by all people.
He outlined the many advantages that accrue to a corporation which quickly addresses these issues, which the world is being increasingly forced to face. These advantages are being able to set the standard at what you already can do, generating trust with different parties and the public, being at the table when policy changes are discussed (BP participated in the Kyoto Protocol discussions), and getting a head-start on the next technology. BP's pursuit of these advantages began in 1997 when it first launched its "Beyond Petroleum" initiative. In doing so, it took a bold move to admit that the product (fossil fuels) was part of the problems (pollution, climate change, etc.). Because BP took this landmark initiative, Perry stated that the company was in a better situation to seek the aforementioned advantages.