Are you among those who worry about where their products come from? So you prefer to shell out an extra buck for fair trade coffee instead of a regular cup of joe. You look for the Fairtrade certification when you buy clothes. But what about your phone? Fairphone, an Amsterdam-headquartered company, is selling phones on the premise that they are made from conflict-free minerals. Is that a compelling proposition for customers? Will they pick an ethically produced phone over an iPhone which has greater functionality, more aspiration value and a style quotient?
China’s Pollution Tax: Putting a Price on Pollution
In a bid to improve the environment, the Chinese government is considering imposing a pollution tax. But how exactly should it determine the tax amount?
JingJinJi, a Chinese Megalopolis in the Making
A megalopolis six times the size of New York, JingJinJi will ease the pressures being faced by China’s capital Beijing.
The Business of Urbanization in China
The government is preparing to throw billions into urbanization in China, but has it thought through the hardware challenges? Perhaps the most striking way to take in China’s startling urbanization is to sit in front of a computer and click through to Google’s Earth Engine. A search for Shanghai on the website brings up time-lapsed images […]
Solar Energy: The Sunny Side of the Street
Why solar energy is growing, how it will change the world, and who will profit from it. By 2020—or sooner, depending on how much sun you get and how expensive store-bought electricity is in your region—power from photovoltaic solar cells on your roof will be the same price as power from your local utility. And […]
Foxconn Faces its Future
As one of the world’s largest employers and largest consumer electronics manufacturers, Foxconn has grown too big to fail, but it must address looming challenges if it wants to sustain its growth. Creating a successful company is far from easy, but keeping it successful may be an even greater challenge. Business history is filled with […]
Sustainability and Inclusiveness Primer: CSR Guidelines for Chinese Companies Going Global
Chinese companies going global have key projects in developing nations, yet they often pay scant attention to corporate social responsibility (CSR) guidelines. For future success, CSR is indispensable. China has attracted a large amount of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) for the past decade or so, and in the recent past it has started to […]
Sustainability and Inclusiveness Primer: ESG Issues in Business
How are environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues adressed in business in China? Most companies don’t bother to look beyond the typical metrics that define success or failure of a business, such as sales, revenues and profitability. But that is beginning to change now as an increasing number of institutional investors have also started looking into […]
Bottom of the Pyramid and Beyond: The Thinker Interview with Stuart Hart
In the year 2002, C.K. Prahalad and Stuart Hart published a groundbreaking article in Strategy+Business magazine that introduced to the world the idea of the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP). The idea, which says that the poor present a vast untapped business opportunity, and if companies serve the poor, they can help eradicate poverty and […]
The Thinker Interview: Jeffrey Pfeffer on Human Sustainability
Organization behavior expert and Stanford Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer on the poor state of human sustainability in organizations In a career spanning more than four decades, there is one thing that Jeffrey Pfeffer has never done—mince words and sugarcoat advice. Pfeffer, the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate […]
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