About SoLOrganizational LearningPublications & ResourcesConsulting & ProgramsCommunities & ConsortiaJoin SoLMember Access
Home > About SoL (OLD) > sustainability.html
Sustainability

Sustainability

Contact:
Joe Laur
978.544.0001
seedjoe@aol.com

Sara Schley
978.544.7777
seedsara@aol.com

The SoL Sustainability Consortium brings together business leaders who see Sustainability as a key strategic driver for business innovation and growth. These leaders are committed to making the fundamental changes necessary to build economically and ecologically sustainable enterprises and to create and share knowledge about the process. We believe these advances will be achieved through companies collaborating in three dimensions. We frame these as generative questions:

  1. How can we harness the spirit and imagination of a company's people toward a genuine sense of purpose in creating a sustainable enterprise? This includes taking action to align our respective businesses with the natural systems of which they are part.

  2. How can we develop breakthrough designs and technologies that maximize product quality, service and value while minimizing consumption of material and energy? These technologies emulate nature, where waste from one process is "food" for another, energy demands are met by renewable sources and the diversity of the system is maximized.

  3. How can we identify and inquire into the external forces that make such progress difficult, and in some business settings, extremely difficult? We are not waiting for "the rules of the game" by which businesses operate to change. Many of these rules are within our own power to change and we will take proactive action to do so. We also recognize that some are not, such as the way society (and consequently national policy) prices natural resources. It is our aim to demonstrate the business and societal advantages of bringing the economic system into greater harmony with larger natural systems, and to support whatever changes are needed to achieve this.

What's Unique About this Initiative:

It is:

  • A group of visionary companies and leaders who see Sustainability as a key strategic business opportunity.
  • Using a learning approach where best practices, breakthroughs and insights are shared and collaborative thinking, innovation and action are encouraged.
  • Taking a systems thinking approach to the issues, looking at core principles, underlying structures and high leverage opportunities.
  • Committed to achievement and reflection where new learning is translated into disciplined action and our actions in turn generate new learning for ourselves and the world.
  • Cross-cultural, drawing together businesses from around the world