Conference Focuses on Social, Environmental Factors Affecting Business

Recognition that community and environmental considerations affect profitability is changing companies around the world.

To explore how business can position for competitive advantage in this environment UNC Kenan-Flagler’s Center for Sustainable Enterprise (CSE) at the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise will host the conference “Reinventing Today’s Business for the Challenges of Tomorrow,” March 30-31, 2006.

Corporate executives and business academics will explore strategies for creating innovative business models and organizational processes at CSE’s annual conference.

“We are bringing business and academic leaders together to share major social and environmental trends that are influencing business and explore how managers can respond to meet future challenges,” said conference chair Albert H. Segars, CSE director and the RBC Centura Distinguished Professor of entrepreneurship at UNC Kenan-Flagler.

Janine Benyus, biologist, innovation consultant and author, will give the keynote address on biomimicry, a discipline that studies nature's best ideas to solve human problems. She will share examples from her work with such companies as GE, HP, Interface and S.C. Johnson to learn from and emulate natural models.

Academics and business executives will collaborate to address:

• Global social and environmental trends and their implications for business strategy
• Corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting, metrics and evaluation tools
• Models of innovation, R&D, and design for clean tech products
• Integrating environmental management into corporate strategy
• Emerging opportunities in environmental markets
• Social/environmental implications in finance and risk reduction
• Marketing and social enterprise/CSR strategies
• Business opportunities in emerging markets

Organizations represented in the sessions will include:

• Bank of America
• Intel Corporation
• Timberland Company
• SJF Ventures
• Cherokee Investment Properties LLC
• Progress Energy
• IDEO
• Novozymes A/S
• Strategic Sustainability Consulting
• Global Branding Institute
• Caux Round Table

Professors from UNC Kenan-Flagler, University of California-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Columbia University, Bentley College, Northeastern University, Thunderbird’s Garvin School of International Management, University of Vermont and Duke University also will participate.

For more information visit http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/ki/cse/Conference/.