Key Takeaways:

• Building corporate sustainability is not about “being responsible for” but rather recognizing “how to work in concert with” a broader group of stakeholders to reduce friction and produce better results.
• Innovation in a staid industry requires:

- Creation of an environment to embrace and enable change – first speak about what will remain the same and season in what the change will be.

- Recognition that incumbency is NOT powerful (i.e., faulty assumption that formulas in the past will work in the future)

- Innovate by embracing what is evolving – e.g., technology

• Adopt a simple "Measure/Report/Reduce” framework – allows managements to act and the board to make informed decisions based on data-driven metrics to drive accountability and achieve whatever the “reduction” goals are – e.g., emissions, talent attrition, customer loss, use of resources, barriers to entry, etc.
• Don’t make the mistake of focusing heavily on low hanging fruit instead of looking broadly at both risk and opportunity
• Oversight tool: Instead of asking management “How do we make this?” consider the asking “How do we make this better?”

Resources:

• Book: BOOM! Deciphering Innovation: How Disruption Drives Companies to Transform or Die
• Resource Center: BDO ESG Center of Excellence