Topic: Business
In the arena of social enterprise, a California collaboration is creating a high yield. In this university podcast, executives Diane Del Signore and Maisie Greenwalt share how Community Alliance with Family Farmers and Bon Appétit Management Company have partnered to create a local distribution system to get locally grown products into institutional settings. They also talk about efforts to help farmers become more organic.
What happens when the nation's largest fast-food chain and a leading environmental advocacy group partner to reduce food packaging waste? Sharing the lessons learned from the groundbreaking success story of an NGO-business model that began 20 years ago and led way for other cross-sector partnerships in sustainability, Environmental Defense Fund's Gwen Ruta and McDonald's Bob Langert, with host Jerry Michalski, kick off The Future of Green open call series.
Businesses are increasingly focusing on reducing their water footprint as a source of strategic advantage and as a demonstration of good corporate citizenship. In this audio interview, part of a Stanford Center for Social Innovation series on water around the world, Pepsico's Dan Bena talks with Stanford MBA student Ashish Jhina about his company's efforts to reduce water use in its bottling plants and its partnerships to promote sustainable water use in agriculture and to provide improved access to clean drinking water.
Social networking has quickly gone from new technology to cultural movement. The diminishing cost of connecting through Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn expands and enhances those weak-tie relationships on the outer edges of our social circles most of all. Clara Shih of Hearsay Labs explains Facebook era psychology and the new norms and expectations it creates. It will shape our relationships with fans, followers, and customers.
With corporate social responsibility as a business imperative, Levi Strauss has evaluated how well its suppliers are doing on making cotton production more sustainable. In this university podcast, executive Michael Kobori discusses the company's efforts to support organic cotton farming that reduces water use and relies less on child labor, particularly in Uzbekistan.
How can a company put environmental sustainability into its DNA? In this university podcast, Joao Paulo Ferreira, VP of operations and logistics, talks about Natura Cosmetics Brasil's supply chain and its challenges to embed sustainability concepts into the way it is designed and operated. He discusses the company's culture of collaboration with indigenous communities, NGOs, and other organizations.
For Nike, corporate social responsibility has become a business driver rather than an obligation. In this university podcast, Nike's director of global logistics, Dawn Vance, talks about how the company is integrating performance, innovation, and sustainability throughout the entire supply chain. She also shares new efforts to provide a "closed loop" business model in which products can be reclaimed and reused at the end of their functional life.
Dr. Moria Gunn speaks with Jay Siegel and Garry Neil, Chief Biotechnology Officer and Corporate VP for Science and Technology with Johnson and Johnson, about their biotechnology strategy and their worldwide search for disruptive technologies.
Dr. Moira Gunn catches up with the co-authors of No Size Fits All, from Mass Marketing to Mass Hand Selling, Tom Hayes and Mike Malone. In their new book, Hayes and Malone take an entirely new approach to marketing, embracing small, trust-based online groups as powerful vehicles for creating customers and gathering invaluable feedback.
Joshua Bixby connects web site speed and performance with return on investment, as measured by increases in the size of orders and the number of conversions. He reports that his company demonstrated a 6% increase in order size and a 9% increase in conversions with improvements in the performance of mobile web pages. He believes that the same type of data should be collected for mobile users to help developers make informed decisions when allocating limited resources.
