sustainable brands live blogWe have a busy live blogging schedule today.  The Green Economy Post team will be reporting on 11 sessions. In addition to our live blogging team,  we will be streaming commentary from 0ver 70 SB ’10 attendees. Topics include: key market drivers, the best green brands, the metrics of qualitative growth, responsible profit, incfluencing consumers, drivers behind sustainable brand innovation, GreenXchange and eco-Innovation, CSR best practices, CSR Reporting Case Studies, tools for measuring environmental and motivating mainstream consumers to make sustainable choices. See our live blogging schedule for today below.  Click on the session title in bold to view the live blog of the event.  Don’t forget to post your questions and comments.

Note: Schedule subject to change.

09:00 am – 09:15 am. Welcome and Morning Kick Off

Gil Friend  CEO/Founder, Natural Logic, Inc.
SB’10 opens with a look at some of the key market drivers and trends shaping today’s sustainable business marketplace.

09:15 am – 09:30 am. The Unfolding Green Brands Landscape: Notes on the Trendline
Annie Longsworth  President, SF, and Global Sustainability Practice Leader, Cohn & Wolfe
Updating research presented at SB’07, SB’08 and SB’09 Cohn & Wolfe will present new research that explores specific behaviors and attitudes that are driving (or preventing) purchase of sustainable products, as well as the latest public perception about which brands are the best at being green.

09:30 am – 09:45 am.  Re-Defining the Metrics of Success: The Emerging Measures of Qualitative Growth
Hazel Henderson  Futurist & Economics Iconoclast, Ethical Markets Media
Hazel Henderson, a well known and globally respected futurist, economist, syndicated columnist, consultant on sustainable development presents some of her newest thinking on why GDP is no longer a serving us as the ultimate measure of progress, and offers a look at some of the significant initiatives taking place to define what comes next, including EU’s Beyond GDP project and President Sarkozy’s Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress.

09:45 am – 10:00 am. Responsibility AND Profit: From Corporate Responsibility to Responsible Profit
Jason Saul  CEO, Mission Measurement
Measuring corporate social and environmental responsibility is difficult, time-consuming and often produces meaningless data that hard-nosed business leaders find underwhelming or hard to believe. However this is not necessarily so, according to Mission Measurement CEO, Jason Saul. Saul argues that the key to measurement is effective strategy. Based on his forthcoming book, Social Innovation, Inc., Saul will outline five types of social innovation that turn social change into powerful business strategy. Combined with experience-based best practices in impact measurement, these innovation strategies make measuring the business and social value of CSR program practical, timely and relevant to your company’s most pressing business objectives.

10:00 am – 10:15 am: Design for Behavior Change: Helping Consumers Co-Create a Better World
Bruce MacGregor  Managing Partner, IDEO
Across industries, we see a growing gap: On the one hand, immense technologic and informational shifts have fueled people’s desires for their long term well-being, financial security, and positive environmental impact. On the other hand, only a few businesses have stepped in to offer products and services to help people shift their habits in order to support their emerging aspirations. IDEO has deep experience in the area of behavior change, and has curated a set of insights, perspectives and designs that illustrate the untapped market opportunity to participate in people’s desire for change and deliver solutions towards progress. We’ll explore the tremendous opportunity for goods, services and new business models that not only survive in change, but thrive on it.

10:15 am – 10:45 am. Today’s Data Explosion and the Drive to Radical Corporate Transparency
Paul Herman  Founder/CEO, HIP Investor
Dara O’Rourke  CEO/Founder, GoodGuide
Cynthia Figge  President, COO and Co-Founder, CSRHUB
Mary Capozzi  Senior Director Sustainability, Best Buy
Jim Sullivan  Strategic Advisor, SAP
One of the prime drivers behind sustainable brand innovation at the moment is the explosion of new data initiatives that promise increased clarity to all stakeholders on the comparative sustainability of various materials, suppliers and brands. This session will highlight just a couple and spark further conversation about how you can/should be preparing for what’s coming down the road.


11:30 am – 11:45 am. GreenXchange AND the Effort to Speed Eco-Innovation

Charlie Brown  Business Development Lead, GreenXchange, NIKE
GreenXchange, spearheaded by 10 companies and social enterprises including Nike, Yahoo!, IDEO, Mountain Equipment Co-op, salesforce.com, the Outdoor Industry Association, and others, is a groundbreaking initiative geared to empower companies working to protect the environment to share their research — legally — for social good and mutual profit, and at a time when businesses everywhere are allocating larger shares of their investment dollars to social innovation. This effort, and other emerging radical collaboration efforts reflect another driver ensuring the pace of sustainable innovation is not letting up any time soon.

02:00 pm – 03:00 pm. CSR’s Seven Best Practices
Perry Goldschein  Founding Partner, SDialogue LLC
As current market conditions demand that companies deploy sustainability initiatives, many organizations have never engaged with all of their stakeholders in a systemic way or set up a sustainability management system. This session takes a complex, rapidly evolving field and puts it in to a digestible order for attendees. The session identifies the top seven practices every organization should be considering as well as explains how these tactics work together. In addition, the session explores how organizations can use these practices to thrive in the years ahead.

02:00 pm – 03:00 pm. Telling Your Story: CSR Reporting Case Studies Unwrapped
Dale Hart  Partner / Creative Director, Methodologie
Lewis Fix  VP Brand Management & Sustainable Product Development, Domtar
Kindley Walsh-Lawlor  Vice President, Strategic Planning & Environmental Affairs, Gap, Inc.
How can CSR reports service the needs of stakeholders, customers, and company employees? This panel will explore case studies and best practices in transparency and the evolution of social (responsibility) reporting.

03:15 pm – 04:15 pm. Getting Beyond the Spreadsheet: New Tools for Measuring Impact
Will Sarni  Founder/CEO, Domani
Christina Siun O’Connell  President – Americas, Credit360
Joel Riciputi  Director of Marketing, Hara
Duncan Bradford  Vice President, ecoSoftware, Energy & Sustainability Solutions, CA Technologies
Carbon industry software leaders will examine the current and projected market for carbon management software. Issues such as why companies need to move beyond short term carbon accounting spreadsheets and harness the analytical capabilities of current software providers and the need to integrate carbon, water and energy data. As businesses move to operating in a low carbon and in general a low “resource footprint” world, carbon software capable of supporting robust analyses and decision making are no longer optional.

03:15 pm – 04:15 pm. Motivating Mainstream Consumers to Make Sustainable Choices

Suzanne Shelton  President and CEO, Shelton Group
Mainstream consumers are complicated. They know just enough buzz words to make you think they know more than they do, and most don’t actually go green to save the planet. This interactive session will reveal how mainstream consumers ACTUALLY make decisions about which green products to buy.

Tune in tomorrow for more

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Author: Tracey de Morsella (323 Articles)

Tracey de Morsella started her career working as an editor for US Technology Magazine. She used that experience to launch Delaware Valley Network, a publication for professionals in the Greater Philadelphia area. Years later, she used the contacts and resources she acquired to work in executive search specializing in technical and diversity recruitment. She has conducted recruitment training seminars for Wachovia Bank, the Department of Interior and the US Postal Service. During this time, she also created a diversity portal called The Multicultural Advantage and published the Diversity Recruitment Advertising Toolkit, a directory of recruiting resources for human resources professionals. Her career and recruitment articles have appeared in numerous publications and web portals including Woman Engineer Magazine, Monster.com, About.com Job Search Channel, Workplace Diversity Magazine, Society for Human Resource Management web site, NSBE Engineering Magazine, HR.com, and Human Resource Consultants Association Newsletter. Her work with technology professionals drew her to pursuing training and work in web development, which led to a stint at Merrill Lynch as an Intranet Manager. In March, she decided to combine her technical and career management expertise with her passion for the environment, and with her husband, launched The Green Economy Post, a blog providing green career information and covering the impact of the environment, sustainable building, cleantech and renewable energy on the US economy. Her sustainability articles have appeared on Industrial Maintenance & Plant Operation, Chem.Info,FastCompany and CleanTechies.