Sectors - Articles

Tony Prophet - Social Good and Environmental Sustainability at HP

With energy costs on the rise and the U.S. government expected to push for reduced carbon emissions, environmental sustainability has become a market imperative for Hewlett-Packard. Speaking at Stanford for the 2007 Responsible Supply Chains Conference, HP's senior VP of personal systems, Tony Prophet, shares how his company is working to reduce its environmental footprint throughout the product life cycle.

Stuart Smolkin - Disaster Managment Lessons from Katrina

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Stuart Smolkin's conveyor belt manufacturing company, Intralox, had no disaster plan in place. The company had to deal with the disruption of electricity, phones, and computer systems in order to organize evacuated employees into recovery teams. How did Intralox get running again in a mere 30 days? In this Stanford podcast, Smolkin offers lessons on preparedness for businesses faced with disruption.

Maria Eitel - Nike’s Efforts to Empower Young Girls

Nike has taken pains to clean up its act since the media brought public attention to human rights violations in its supplier factories in the 1990s. Through the Nike Foundation, the sports and fitness giant is taking a proactive approach to some of the world's most challenging social problems. In this audio lecture, Nike Foundation president Maria Eitel talks to a Stanford MBA audience about how the organization is focusing on creating economic opportunities for adolescent girls around the world as a means of alleviating poverty.

Making Supply Chains Socially Responsible - Promoting Sustainability in the Coffee Industry

Starbucks has developed guidelines for creating and maintaining a sustainable supply chain, which it calls Coffee and Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E.) Practices. These coffee-buying guidelines help the company establish equitable relationships with farmers, workers, and communities. In this audio lecture recorded at Stanford during the 2007 Responsible Supply Chains Conference, Willard Hay explores what's making C.A.F.E. Practices successful.

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Cultivate Your Ecosystem

By Paul N. Bloom & J. Gregory Dees 1

Social entrepreneurs not only must understand the broad environment in which they work, but also must shape those environments to support their goals, when feasible. Borrowing insights from the field of ecology, the authors offer an ecosystems framework to help social entrepreneurs create long-lasting and significant social change.

Failing Well

By Judith M. Gueron

Foundations need to make more of the right kinds of mistakes.

Evaluation Blues

By Laura Silverstein & Erin J. Maher 3

How accountability requirements hurt small, innovative programs the most.

Hannah Jones - Corporate Social Responsibility and Innovation

Nike has traveled the full range of the corporate social responsibility movement, from the campaigning days when it was a poster child for all things to do with poor working conditions through the era of multistakeholder partnerships. It has now moved into the next phase where corporate responsibility becomes part of the business model. Speaking at the Stanford 2007 Responsible Supply Chains Conference, Nike's VP for corporate responsibility, Hannah Jones, looks at the future of corporate responsibility as the focus shifts upstream.