FLASH IMPACT

By INSEAD Alumni Association France | The Business & Society Summer Blog 

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“LE MOT DE LA FIN” DU BLOG DE L’ETE

Mais pas de nos conversations sur l’impact positif !

Voici venu la fin de notre festival d’articles dans Flash Impact.

L’été a été riche en réflexions et échanges entre Alumni, autour de l’impact positif, du business for good, de la responsabilité des entreprises, sociale, sociétale et environnementale, du réchauffement climatique et de tout ce que nous pouvons faire pour transformer nos entreprises.

Si la crise a été, pour certains, un catalyseur ou accélérateur de tendances, d'autres craignent une régression, la priorité court terme devenant la survie financière de l’entreprise.

Mais même si l’on est toujours plus convaincu que la santé est primordiale, que le bien-être social est essentiel, que l’environnement doit être préservé et que tout doit être fait pour ralentir le réchauffement climatique, un constat de tous nos auteurs : il reste encore beaucoup plus à faire et beaucoup plus vite !

Merci à tous pour ces échanges ! Continuez la conversation en rejoignant notre groupe « Business & Society » de l’INSEAD Alumni Association France, et venez contribuer à nos actions.

Contact : Sophie Boyer Chammard

Pour relire notre Blog de l’été Flash Impact, c’est ici !

Sophie Boyer Chammard, MBA INSEAD 97D VP Business & Society, Deputy Director, IAAF

Hicham Aber, MBA INSEAD 19D Startup Advisor

Annie Kahn , MBA INSEAD 83J Administratrice, DELFINGEN

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Switch! Des parcours inspirants pour passer à l’action

Watch the very first video of our brand new interview series, Switch! 

Switch is a program that explores the vision and the journey of leaders who have ‘switched’ to make more sense of their professional life by combining business and impact. From an interview to the other, you’ll discover the inspiring stories of entrepreneurs, managers or CEOs who are reinventing our societial models. Through their stories, we will try to understand what are the personal triggers that made them move into action and how they are laying the foundations of a new world, yet to be defined. 

For this first opus, we have met with the young social entrepreneur, Eva Sadoun. Eva is the co-founder of Lita.co, a responsible participative platform that finances startups and SMEs that have a strong social and environmental impact. Up to today, LITA has raised 10 millions euros amongst the general public and has funded 35 social entreprises; LITA operates in France, Belgium and Italy. 

You will discover how Eva and her team challenge the financial dogma, engage citizens to build a sustainable and inclusive finance and democratize access to investing. During the interview, the 29 year-old entrepreneur, who is also board member of TechForGood, of Mouvement des Entrepreneurs Sociaux and of Finansol, shares openly her vision of the finance world, her position as a woman in this sector and her hopes thanks to the commitment of younger generations. 

You will also have a chance to ask your questions and share your thoughts on the topic during a roundtable at the Global Insead Day, on 11  September.

Sophie Boyer Chammard, MBA INSEAD 97D VP Business & Society, Deputy Director, IAAF

Matthieu Chartier, MBA INSEAD 18J Digital Advisor, Microsoft

Alexandre Guinet, MAP INSEAD 16 Global Sustainability Programme Director, Essilor International

Marion Pelletier, MBA INSEAD 08J Co-founder, The Pond & The Waterfalls

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Supporting the next generation of young changemakers

How young people will play an increasingly significant role in change movements and innovation across various sectors

Last January, for the first time in its history,  World Economic Forum (WEF) emphatically recognized the power of young people as a force for change by giving young voices prominent stage space throughout the event. The Annual Meeting of WEF is one of the foremost platforms for the world’s top leaders across business, government, NGOs, and academia to come together to shape the global agenda at the beginning of each year. Including young people and their ideas is a growing worldwide trend with young people finally being seen as active stakeholders in their own futures.

While for many people Greta Thunberg is the visible forefront of this generation of youth leaders, she is anything but alone. Globally, youth activists, scientists and campaigners such as Salvador Gómez-Colón, Autumn Peltier, Natasha Mwansa, Ayakha Melithafa, Melati Wijsen and Fionn Ferreira amongst others are taking action. Melati who has successfully campaigned against plastic bags on her island of Bali, is currently launching a youth empowerment project called Youthtopia; Ayakha represents many young climate activists from the African continent and is advocating for mandatory climate curriculums in schools; Salvador created the Light and Hope for Puerto Rico campaign which distributed solar-powered lamps to some 3.000 underserved families. 

Reimagining the role of children

For the past 6 years, we at Designathon Works have been advocating for a radical rethink on how society sees children. As our founder, Emer Beamer often asks: “What if we saw children as changemakers, engaged humans, activists, scientists or inventors, and then helped them to develop their abilities for these roles?”

Through our programs, we have worked with over 65.000 children between 7 and12 years old. Both our first-hand experience and our research shows that children consider global problems carefully and can come up with surprisingly creative and credible solutions. We found that 70% of children are very concerned about world problems. In contrast, only 34% of them believe that adults are genuinely concerned.  The concern of children reflects their willingness to take action, as we have seen in the Fridays for Future and Black Lives Matter Movements.

How to educate the next million changemakers

While we are of course big supporters of the Fridays for Future movement and how they advocate for a better future, we also see the need to have more paths of action. Children and young people can also fight for good by becoming inventors, scientists, and campaigners. We want to see education systems where children and young people learn to problem solve unpredictable and complex futures. Education systems help them develop their abilities to deal with social, economic, and environmental challenges in ways that fit their talents. 

That is why we need education programs that don't just provide children with knowledge on the Sustainable Development Goals such as clean energy, poverty, and equality. These education programs also need to focus on the (21st century) skills to collaboratively develop new solutions, use new technologies, and take action. 

To unpack this statement a step further there are multiple benefits if we combine education programs that aim at both SDG knowledge and 21st-century skills in combination:

Environmental education can potentially lead to an improvement of 83% of ecological behavior amongst school children. Stanford University studied more than a hundred scientific studies published from 1994 to 2013 by other institutions on the same subject, which led to this article and conclusion. 

Unesco’s Learning Objectives for achieving the SDG’s and New vision of education of WEF show an overlap in competencies that will help students to approach complex challenges such as creativity, critical thinking/problem solving, communication, and collaboration. These competencies are essential to the future workforce, being another reason to start embedding these competencies in current learning programs.

The OECD Learning Framework 2030 strongly promotes the concept of agency. Agency is the capacity to set a goal, reflect, and act responsibly to affect change. To act rather be acted upon. Meaning, if children are empowered to take action, they become the most active agents of change. They in turn become influencers of their parents’ behavior.

Last but not least, any such education programs should be inclusive by design. Inclusive meaning that all children, regardless of their gender, race, social-economic status, ability, or learning situation, can benefit from these programs. It should recognize that all children have something of value to contribute, which means it should aim for a universal way to create the next generation of changemakers around the globe. 

What can businesses do to support the next generation of changemakers?

Our expectation (and conviction) is that young people will play an increasingly significant role in change movements and innovation across various sectors. This wave is not coming, it’s happening. Whether we like it or not, young people worldwide are taking their futures into their own hands, from fighting climate change to fighting discrimination to TikTok hashtags and tackling poverty. 

We call on you as a business leader to play an active role in this wave by rethinking how you will run your business through and beyond this Covid-19 pandemic. How will you advance your business by including these brilliant, engaged, and innovative minds? How will you recognize the force for change by giving young people and children a voice as an important stakeholder? How will you engage children and young people as a new generation of customers of your brand? How will you empower children and young people to fight for the SDGs that your organization supports?

It is more important than ever to include diverse voices today! As 17-year old Salvador Gomes-Colon said: “We are not the future of the world, we are the present”. 

So what will you do to support him and others?

Anne Sallaerts, SEP INSEAD 18 Co-Founder & Managing Director, Designathon Works

Emer Beamer, Founder & Chief Learning Officer, Designathon Works

Curious about our work? Have a look at our website, these video’s and report:

Designathon Works website: http://www.designathonworks.com/ Video Global Children's Designathon 2019: Accra, Montreal and Paris Report Global Children's Designathon 2019: Global Voices of the next generation on food and climate (2019). Interview with a Global Children’s Designathon participant: Nora  Next iteration on what one of the inventions could look like: Lampje 

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Work from home vs. commuting: a simple environmental case for the extreme 8-hour video conference day

Lockdown workers use digital infrastructure to maintain their activity instead of commuting. If these digital habits are here to stay, what are their impact on the environment and especially greenhouse gas emissions compared to commuting?

A step aside: keys on greenhouse gas and climate change

A greenhouse gas (GHG) is a gas that absorbs and emits radiant energy causing the greenhouse effect. The primary greenhouse gases are water vapor (H20), carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and ozone (O3). The concentration of greenhouse gas in the atmosphère is linked to the global average temperature. There is scientific consensus that climate change is occurring and human-made CO2 emissions are predominantly causing it.

The warming power of the different gas as well as their persistence in the atmosphere are very different. Scientists have defined an equivalent between the different greenhouse gas and CO2. This way, greenhouse gas emissions can be expressed in one common unit, i.e., metric tonnes CO2 equivalent (t CO2e). CO2 has been chosen as it represents three-quarters of total greenhouse gas emissions released in the atmosphere each year.

It is always useful to have a few orders of magnitude in mind to put things in context. Common sense and experience teach you how much €1, €10, or €100 are worth or how many calories are required per day without putting on weight. However, we have hardly any references in our lives for greenhouse gas emissions.

Here are a few orders of magnitude

50 billion t CO2e are released worldwide each year by human activities  [1]

France emits 460 million t CO2e per year [2]

The total emission caused by the consumption of an average individual living in France (also known as carbon footprint) is 11 t CO2e [3]

A Paris New-York return flight is 2,6 t CO2e per person [4]

The average family car driving 15 000 km per year releases 3,3 tCO2e [5]

The key to the solution to climate change rests first and foremost in decreasing the number of emissions released into the atmosphere.

Individual carbon footprint should reach no more than 3,9 t CO2e by 2030 and 1,5 t CO2e by 2050 to maintain temperature increase below 2°C [6]

Digital services and GHG emissions

In our professional and personal life, we rely on digital services and devices a lot. The Covid-19 crisis reinforced the role of digital. Without the Internet and all the digital services, we would not be able to work remotely, keep contact with loved ones, exercise, study, and entertain ourselves.

Sustainability awareness in electronics is new. Although digital technology is invisible and looks “clean”, it relies on equipment that needs to be built, data centers and telecom networks that need electric power, end users equipment that needs to be recharged, and finally equipment that needs to be taken care of at the end of their lives.

As a result, the digital sector accounts for 3-4% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions [7]. This is already twice as much as the 2% emissions of civil aviation. Furthermore, it grows at 9% per annum, compared to 1,5% in all other sectors. Video streaming accounts for most of the traffic on the internet and GHG emissions.

The digital sector can be a leveraging tool in the ecological and energy transition provided it takes into account the same constraints as all other sectors and reduces its impact on the environment: energy and mineral resources scarcity, climate change and natural ecosystems vulnerability.

Homeworking vs. commuting

When going to the office, you may drive a car, take public transport or even ride your bike… With the exception of riding a bike or walking to the office, like the majority of human activities involving combustion, car commuting releases CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the Earth’s atmosphere contributing to the acceleration of global warming.

How does car commuting compares to an 8 hour online video conference day of an “extreme work-from-home”? Computing the impact of digital services is a difficult task. A rough estimate is shown in the graph below using simple assumptions and data from the Shift Project data repository [8]. Everything else being equal, this calculation shows that if you drive to work you have a much lesser GHG impact if you stay home and video conference all day unless you drive less than 0,1km in France, 1,8 km in the USA or 2,5 km in China. Estimation is based on a medium resolution video stream of 480p: the higher the video resolution the higher the resulting GHG emissions.

Countries show different results because their energy mix differs. For instance, France relies on nuclear electricity, low carbon energy for 76% of its electricity. China’s electricity is from coal (70%), a high carbon emission energy. This results in more emissions per each unit of electricity in China than in France.

This is a first-order analysis. To deepen the analysis, second-order phenomenons could be taken into account:

The analysis assumes that the video conferencing session is between persons in the same territory and that the service uses telecom and data center infrastructure in the same territory. As the Internet relies on a distributed architecture, this is only partly true.

If working from home means more equipment (computers, phones, servers…) in households and enterprises or causes indirect negative effects such as people deciding to live further away from work and shops, results have to be revisited to take into account the so-called “rebound effect”.

Digital transformation has the ability to reduce the commuting impact on GHG emissions by enabling work from home. However, negative impacts can be significant if not accounted for in a proper ecological transformation strategy. If you are interested in furthering the topic of digital transformation and the environment, there are more and more research and studies available, some of which are listed in the references below [7,9].

Corinne Bach, MBA INSEAD 05D Entrepreneur in ecological transition

This article was initially published here : https://www.transitionroute.com/work-from-home-vs-commuting-a-simple-environmental-case-for-the-extreme-8-hour-video-conference-day/

References

[1] Climate Data Explorer. 2017. Country Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Washington, DC: World Resources Institute. http://cait.wri.org

[2] Tableau de bord CITEPA https://www.citepa.org/fr/politique-ges/

[3] L’empreinte carbone by Commissariat Général au Développement Durable Services de la donnée et des études statistiques, April 2018 https://www.statistiques.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/2019-01/document-travail-n%2038-empreinte%20carbone-avril-2018.pdf

[4] Computation from ADEME Base Carbone https://www.basecarbone.fr/fr/basecarbone/donnees-consulter/liste-element/categorie/191

[5] Computation from data from ADEME Base carbone https://www.basecarbone.fr/fr/basecarbone/donnees-consulter/liste-element/categorie/151

[6] Computation from population growth projection of UN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population and 2°C pathway implying a 4% yearly decrease in global emissions

[7] The Shift Project, Lean ICT: towards digital sobriety, 2019 https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/lean-ict-our-new-report/

[8] Computation from The Shift Project Digital Environmental Repository data on video (10mn 1080p resolution video uses 100Wh of electricity), country electricity mix https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/lean-ict-our-new-report/, March 2019 and data traffic from 1080p and 480p resolution videos https://www.whistleout.com/CellPhones/Guides/How-Much-Data-Does-YouTube-Use

[9] The enablement effect: the impact of mobile communications technologies on carbon emission reductions, GSMA and Carbon Trust, 2019 https://www.gsma.com/betterfuture/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/GSMA_Enablement_Effect.pdf

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Recruter des réfugiés, talents cachés.

Malgré l’augmentation du chômage liée à la crise du Covid, les recruteurs continuent de peiner à trouver certains profils « en tension ». Savoir déceler les talents cachés de réfugiés est une solution triplement gagnante. 

L’histoire se passe le 9 février. J’avais rendez-vous dans un café avec Bahram, réfugié afghan à la recherche d’un emploi. Il me raconte son passé. Nous devisons. La conversation dérive. Il me demande ce que je fais, et je lui parle d’un projet de « nudges », pour accroître la mixité dans les directions d’entreprises françaises. Quand j’évoque ce sujet avec des amis, leur réponse est toujours la même. Incompréhension totale. Mon entourage de diplômés de grandes écoles ignore ce qu’est un nudge, ces « coups de pouce » ou procédés faciles à mettre en œuvre, pour prendre des décisions rationnelles et ne pas laisser le champ libre à son inconscient. Je me suis habituée à devoir expliquer à mes interlocuteurs ce concept que je pensais pourtant connu depuis que deux prix Nobel d’économie ont été attribués consécutivement en 2002 et en 2017 à deux spécialistes de psychologie cognitive et économie comportementale, deux disciplines à l’origine des nudges. 

Dans ce café du 5ième arrondissement parisien, face à Bahram, qui passe d’un petit boulot à un autre, je m’attendais donc à reprendre mes explications. Mais ses yeux brillent. « Vous vous intéressez aux travaux de Daniel Kahneman et Richard Thaler (NDLR : les deux prix Nobel en question) ? ». Je suis stupéfaite. C’est la première fois, que dans un cadre amical, je rencontre quelqu’un qui en sait largement plus que moi sur le sujet. Lui, qui fait la plonge dans des restos, ou des livraisons de repas à domicile.  

Cet épisode prouve, une fois de plus, qu’à ne pas s’intéresser davantage aux compétences des centaines de milliers de réfugiés présents sur le sol français, les entreprises se privent de « talents » dont elles disent avoir cruellement besoin.

Nous le pressentions. C’est la raison pour laquelle il y a deux ans, en mai 2018, avec l’association des anciens élèves de l’Insead (IAAF), et l’Insead elle-même, nous avons créé « Talents cachés », un projet qui vise à mettre en relation réfugiés, recruteurs et dirigeants, pour rapprocher les compétences des uns et les besoins des autres. 

Pour accélérer le processus, nous avons conclu un partenariat avec Wero, cabinet de recrutement pour réfugiés, créé par Théo Scubla, Maxime Baudet, et Fanny Prigent, soit deux jeunes diplômés de l’Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Paris (ESCP), et une ex consultante d’Accenture, très investie dans l’entreprenariat social. Avant Wero, alors qu’il était encore fraîchement arrivé dans son école de commerce, Théo avait créé Wintegreat (aujourd’hui rebaptisé «each One »), un programme de formation, d’accompagnement et d’inclusion de réfugiés. Wero a donc en stocks des milliers de CV de réfugiés qualifiés. Et l’IAAF, ses 6700 diplômés de l’Insead. Nous étions faits pour nous entendre.

Mais, dans un premier temps, nous nous sommes heurtés à un problème de taille. Car, si des réfugiés venus d’horizons divers doivent apprendre les règles de comportements propre aux entreprises françaises, les dirigeants et managers doivent aussi intégrer l’idée que pour recruter un réfugié, il leur faut adopter une méthodologie spécifique, différente de celle mise en oeuvre pour sélectionner un-e jeune diplômé-e, né-e dans l’Hexagone.  

Les réfugiés peuvent apporter beaucoup à l’entreprise. Multilingues, divers, ils ont des compétences humaines hors norme qui leur permettent de refaire leur vie dans un environnement inconnu. Entre autres. Mais n’allez pas leur demander s’ils sont aussi experts dans l’utilisation du logiciel XYZ. Sans doute pas. Si nécessaire, ils apprendront. 

Certes, un recruteur peut estimer qu’embaucher un réfugié est plus risqué que d’embaucher un titulaire de CAP, BTS, d’école d’ingénieur dûment répertoriés. Pour franchir cet obstacle, Wero a recours à un programme de Pôle emploi qui sécurise les recrutements. Les réfugiés y ont droit. Ce programme dit « Préparation opérationnelle à l’emploi collective » ( POEC), financé en grande partie par Pôle emploi, permet à une entreprise de prendre un réfugié en stage, de l’intégrer progressivement et de le former à ses besoins propres.  

De très nombreuses entreprises ont saisi cette opportunité. Car elles continuent de souffrir de la pénurie de compétences, constatée avant la crise et qui perdure depuis. L’accroissement du chômage due à la crise du Covid ne leur a pas permis de résoudre ce problème.

De grandes enseignes comme Ikea, Monoprix ou Leclerc ont saisi la balle au bond. « Nous espérons que ces POEC se transformeront en emploi durable » explique Maxime Baudet, cofondateur de Wero. « Les entreprises se préoccupent plus que jamais des nouveaux enjeux sociaux et sociétaux » explique-t-il. « Nous pouvons les aider à s’engager sur des valeurs, en accroissant la diversité de leurs équipes, tout en répondant à leurs besoins de personnels pour des métiers en tension ».  

Nombre d’experts en management le confirment. Les entreprises ne pourront plus continuer d’être gérées et dirigées comme elles l’étaient par le passé. « Nous avons besoin d’un management réellement humain. (…). Un management qui vise à exercer nos pouvoirs avec une conscience accrue. (…). Ce type de management pourrait faire progresser un capitalisme basé sur la curiosité et la compassion, et donc bien plus innovant et inclusif», explique Gianpiero Petriglieri, professeur en comportement des organisations à l’Insead, dans la Harvard Business Review du 18 juin. 

Autant d’arguments pour que les talents cachés apparaissent enfin au grand jour. Pour une stratégie trois fois gagnante : au bénéfice des entreprises, des réfugiés, et de la société. 

 Annie Kahn, MBA INSEAD 83J Senior advisor de Wero

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EcoVadis: Shedding Light in Supply Chain Sustainability

Considered as a French “soonicorn,” EcoVadis is another successful INSEAD start-up, co-founded by Pierre-François Thaler (MBA INSEAD 99) and partner Frédéric Trinel in 2007. The business helps to bridge the information gap between corporates procurement and suppliers, focusing on extra-financial risk in the environment, social, and governance (ESG).

EcoVadis evaluates supplier ESG performance through a document audit and generates a ‘scorecard’ with the evaluation results. On the EcoVadis platform, suppliers can share the scorecard with client buyers within the EcoVadis network while buyers can monitor supplier’s performance in a user-friendly interface. The co-founders found the INSEAD network indispensable when looking for core members to build this venture – they found Sylvain Guyoton (MBA ’02) as the architect of the evaluation methodology and INSEAD Professor Luk Van Wassenhove as an advisor on the scientific committee.

According to an article by McKinsey & Company, a typical consumer company’s supply chain accounts for more than 80% of greenhouse-gas emissions and more than 90% of the impact on air, land, water, and geological resources. However, a survey by The Sustainability Consortium (TSC) found that less than one-fifth of the 1,700 respondents said they have a comprehensive view of their supply chains’ sustainability performance. EcoVadis aims to shed more light on their suppliers, while solve suppliers’ pain of answering numerous surveys and questionnaires on their ESG practices from different clients. 

Today, EcoVadis has grown into a global company with 600+ employees across 10 offices. Working with over 450 household brand names worldwide, the company has evaluated over 60,000 companies in 200 sectors and 155 countries, collectively accounting for more than US$1.5 trillion in procurement spend globally. After the company received a remarkable €200 million funding from CVC Growth Partners and minority investment from Bain & Company in early 2020, it expects to grow the number of evaluations exponentially. The co-founders credited their success to these main factors: laser-like focus on core business; flexible business model to accommodate market change; and forward-looking international expansion and offshoring strategy early on. 

Now, students can learn about EcoVadis in the classroom as an INSEAD business case on the company was published in January 2020. Hopefully, the case will inspire students to develop their own innovative business services or products to solve pressing sustainability issues our planet faces. 

Learn more about EcoVadis https://www.insead.edu/centres/the-hoffmann-global-institute-for-business-and-society/stories/INSEAD-and-ecovadis-two-decades-of-sustainability-in-business

Anne Nai-tien Huang, MBA INSEAD 19D Technology for Sustainability | Sustainability for Financial Performance

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Stop going in circles

Taking circular economy innovation mainstream

Photo by Maxime Lebrun on Unsplash

Can you draw a perfect circle?

For centuries, children, artists, and mathematicians have strived to create a perfect circle by freehand.

Making the world circular is just as hard as drawing a perfect circle. And successfully executing and deploying such projects in an organization is hard too. But the win can be big for those that get it right — as well as for everyone and everything around them.

At its core, the circular economy promotes waste prevention, less pollution (and polluting processes), reuse of materials, and the regeneration of natural systems. Its principles can also be applied to products and services, business models, and economic systems.

In fact, a 2015 study found that a circular economy model could boost Europe’s productivity by 3 percent by 2030, saving €600 billion a year. Companies like Philips have already embraced circular solutions, such as reclaiming all used customer goods to be carbon-neutral.

Still, circular has struggled to go mainstream.

But things are changing. Here is how:

Finding form

Circular meets Design

The circular design is where the circular economy and design [thinking] intersect. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF), a voice of authority in the circular economy space, has partnered with IDEO to develop the Circular Design Guide. The guide combines the best of circular economy thought-leadership with the finest in design and innovation to provide designers a structured method for incorporating the principles of the circular economy in their work.

Then, circular design meets software

So, how do you draw the perfect circle?

A compass produces the best circles. And it can do it over and over again.

Comparably, adopting and managing circular design at scale in organizations requires the right tools.

NEXT is that compass.

“There’s a world of opportunity to rethink and redesign the way we make stuff.” — Ellen MacArthur Foundation

NEXT, the digitally-guided business design platform is pioneering circular design in a new form. The Circular Design Guide, developed by IDEO and Ellen MacArthur Foundation, is now available in the NEXT marketplace. Teams can tap the best of circular design methods directly in the context of their innovation and business transformation projects.

“Software Is Eating the World” wrote Marc Andreessen in his famous essay in The Wall Street Journal. As our planet sprints towards an uncertain future, organizations will benefit from an actionable, repeatable, and scalable approach to circular design:

End-to-end coverage from Idea-to-Market: NEXT covers the end-to-end scope of circular design projects. It lets organizations capture, nurture, and prioritize the early-stage opportunities. And supports the complete scope of a circular design project that converts the early-stage opportunities into validated and vetted propositions ready for implementation.

Designed for globally-distributed and remote teams: We live in a global economy with supply chains spanning the world. NEXT’s digitally-guided circular design process, and its platform partnerships with the likes of Miro and Zoom, allows distributed teams to work together effectively. Teams spend less time with logistics and traveling, and more time innovating, transforming, and designing what really matters.

Faster time-to-market of circular propositions: Rooted in the principles and best practices of the circular design, NEXT let’s product managers, purchasers, or marketers innovate and transform as the best innovators do. Making the planet better in the timeframes proposed will require everyone to chip in — and I mean everyone. By keeping circular projects on track and teams productive, NEXT will expedite our collective ability to rethink our offerings faster. And accelerate our time towards saving our planet.

People, planet, and profit

Democratizing circular design has a real impact on the world. It brings a user-centric method that makes the world better for people. It hard-wires a process that protects the planet as a resource. And it creates differentiated business models that make profits.

Adopting circular design has never been easier and more relevant for corporates, nonprofits, or public sector organizations. For example, Amsterdam has put circularity at the heart of its post-Covid strategy. The city is adopting the circular economy model that Kate Raworth from Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute explains in her 2017 bestselling book, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist.

“When suddenly we have to care about climate, health, and jobs, housing, care, and communities, is there a framework around that can help us with all of that?” Raworth says. “Yes there is, and it is ready to go.”

In the same respect that business design is a crucial part of good business, circular design is an essential part of better business.

The future looks circular. Expect to see many people designing many perfect circles.

Moodi Mahmoudi, MBA INSEAD 11D CEO & Co-founder, NEXT

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LA CRISE VA-T-ELLE CHANGER LE SENS DU TRAVAIL

Alors que la pandémie a constitué un moment de rupture et de bouleversements inédits pour tous, on peut se demander si la crise a changé le sens du travail, tant collectivement qu’individuellement.

Mais au delà des contraintes et modifications subies, c’est aussi l’opportunité de s’interroger activement sur le sens du travail : celui qu’on lui donne aujourd’hui, celui qu’on souhaite qu’il ait pour nous à l’avenir.

Pour nous aider dans cette réflexion fondamentale, l’association GEF a reçu Marion Genaivre, co-fondatrice de l’agence de philosophie Thaé.

Juliette Picard, Partenaire IAAF : Grandes Ecoles au Féminin Stratégie et Transformation

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“You’ve come a long way, baby”

This slogan, “You’ve come a long way, baby”, was splashed across the glossy magazines of my youth, vaunting women’s progress – via their rights to consume products that had once been reserved for men only. The issue of women’s progress in the business world is another debate entirely: the proverbial glass sometimes seems to be filling gradually (e.g. , according to the French secretary of state in charge of equality between men and women, women held 45,2% of positions on SBF120 management boards in 2019); but the glass moves slowly at the top (21,4% of positions in Exco or equivalent). And these broad numbers hide huge disparities. As mentioned by Guy Le Pechon, MBA INSEAD 69, head of Gouvernance et Structure, and a data specialist on equality between men and women, three corporations among the CAC 40 don’t have any woman at their Exco; and only one reaches the ratio of 40% for this entity.

Yet forward movement is undeniable. I would like to offer here a random walk through some 15 years of experience designing, delivering, and observing initiatives to strengthen the representation of women in companies. Along the way, the useful question I hope to explore is what we have learned about fostering gender balance, and how these insights may help us move further down the road towards greater gender balance. 

When several large French companies signed the “Charte de la Diversité” in 2004, our Head of Human Resources asked me to develop a program that would support women’s career development in the organization. I looked at the market to see what was available and was struck by the way that many training firms seemed to assume that women had to be “fixed”, taught to overcome “weaknesses”, or trained in more masculine behavior. This did not feel right – how could we “strengthen” our pools of female talent by focusing on what women might be “doing wrong”? We chose instead to tackle the issue indirectly: I set up a training program led by a specialist in career management for high potentials – a brilliant older man. “Female issues” were never addressed directly in the program – it just so happened that all the (very interesting and carefully selected) participants in each session were women. (What we didn’t know then was that in this way successfully avoided triggering a dangerous unconscious bias about women’s competence, sending instead the message that anyone, and of course women, could benefit from enhancing their career management skills). My first learning: don’t “fix” people who aren’t “broken” – build their strengths. 

Interestingly, it was a member of what one could call the “old guard” – a highly successful gentleman in a very powerful job – who made another significant contribution to levelling the playing field. “We have lots of women entering the pipeline,” he told me, “but after a first role, the men all ask to lead a sales team, while the women want to move into marketing – jobs do not give them line management responsibility and credibility.” To counter this, he carefully mapped and measured something which had previously been intuitive: what were the key career steps that opened the way up the corporate ladder, and where relative to those steps were the pools of female talent? The corporate “ladder” actually looked more like a vertical maze; often several steps along a same level were necessary before one could climb to the next rung on the ladder. But like any maze, it was easy to get lost. Second learning: By providing clear experienced-based information about the critical steps on any given level, this gentleman basically “injected information” into the career management process – not to tell women what to do with their careers, but to offer more effective advice, starting early on. 

Driving for more women in management eventually began to provoke some pushback: some male colleagues would quietly ask me, “Do I have a future in this organization? Will there always be a woman ahead of me on the promotion list?” Hearing men share such concerns troubled me: if you are promoting a worthy idea and yet generating a sense of unfairness, then the idea needs to be reviewed – not rejected or reduced in ambition, but re-examined. This is when we clearly understood that we had to change not only the way that women looked at themselves in the organization, but also how the organization looked at its people. 

A conversation at a conference on diversity with a woman who held a very senior position in her organization gave me additional insight. Asked about her success, she pointed to the “pairs of eyes” that had watched her work over the years and could vouch for her. It was as though her capabilities had to be cross-checked – which was of course equally true for her male colleagues, who intuitively moved around and got themselves “seen” by several potential sponsors. Long before “sponsorship” became a popular concept, she had realized that it was easier for one person to say, “She is ready for the next job!” if someone else could back up the statement. 

Waiting for this to happen through multiple-year job rotations, we realized, would take much too long. Then I encountered a talent manager in a small financial services organization who had crafted a clever process to respond to precisely this issue: he organized “walkabouts” for talented individuals, setting up a series of meetings for each with high-level executives who might never meet that young woman (or man) until it came time to make a key staffing decision – which was too late. By putting rising potentials in front of senior management, this talent manager was transforming them from names on a CV to real humans whom the senior executives could get to know. Again, this practice plays to our human nature – no amount of data on a page can replace the power of what we learn from interacting with someone. This learning could be called, “you have to be seen to be believed”. 

Despite the value of all these approaches, these actions remain focused on shifting individual mindsets. At some point, on a topic as complex as gender balance, institutions, not just individuals, need to change. And I still did not have the answer to my vague discomfort, my concern that some people felt our efforts to level the playing field were potentially unfair. 

Interestingly, it was ideas from INSEAD research, adopted into our organization, that gave us some of the keys. Most INSEADers are familiar with Kim and Mauborgne’s work on “fair process” – the concept that a fair, well-run decision-making process will lead to better acceptance of the outcome, even by those who do not obtain what they want. This work made its way into our organization: the “fair process”, in which all the voices relevant to a decision were heard and considered before that decision was made, became institutionalized as an essential feature of our people management. A fundamental part of the fair process is feedback: because it embraces the full variety of perspectives on a topic or a person, the process makes it possible to provide feedback to the person, so that the individual can continue to learn and grow. Next learning: good process and good feedback confirm that both your intentions and your decisions are fair. 

In 2018, INSEAD celebrated 50 years of women at the school and hosted a Summit to showcase research from its Gender Initiative. One presentation by Ivana Naumovska, Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship, particularly caught my attention. She had performed meta-analysis of multiple diversity initiatives across companies and sectors and had teased out lessons about what did and did not work. 

The two areas identified as having greatest positive impact were mentoring programs and network-building initiatives: mentoring because it enabled the participants to understand the rules of the game, how their organization really worked (this was true for both mentees and their mentors), and network-building because it cultivated awareness in the individuals of what opportunities – for jobs, projects, useful partnerships, and even just information sharing – were available across their organizations, especially outside their silos. I was pleased to see these conclusions: they were an academic validation of the intuition which had led us to set up mentoring and networking for communities (not just individuals). In other words, by creating groups of mentors or mentees and getting them to coach each other on how to take up these roles, we let people see that this was simply part of “how we do things around here”. Next lesson: if you want to change institutions, not just individuals, give people shared responsibility to build something new together. 

Beyond creating “institutions” that support diversity, what has emerged over time is a culture shift. In the way we pursue gender balance, we are really striving to make good use of the organization’s talent to adapt to changing organizational needs. There are ongoing challenges: how well do all these changes resist a major economic crisis, or a corporate reorganization? As we move out of a public health crisis and towards a difficult economic situation, we need to remain vigilant about topics like diversity. Looking further ahead, I wonder how the “recipes” described above will stand the test of time. Traditional management is being replaced by agile tribes, collectively-managed feature teams, and networked organizations. Millennials have shifting expectations about the meaning of work. What will be the secrets to career success for women (and men) in the organizations of the future? Time will tell, but it is a safe bet that attention to individual mindsets and corporate culture will remain key.  

Jocelyn Phelps, MBA INSEAD 93D Program Director, Leadership and Organization Development at Société Générale

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Devinez quel est le vêtement le plus demandé par les SDF ? Comment les maraudes auprès des SDF m’ont amenées à créer une marque Made in France

Je m’appelle Sandrine (MBA INSEAD 02D). J’habite à Paris et, depuis quelques années, je suis bénévole à la Protection Civile. Dans le cadre de maraudes hebdomadaires au contact des sans-abris de mon quartier, j’ai pu constater qu’ils manquaient particulièrement de chaussettes. C’est le produit textile qu’il demandent le plus. Mais l’association n’en a que rarement à distribuer. 

En ville et notamment à Paris que je connais mieux, des ressources sont mises à la disposition des SDF pour se laver, se nourrir, poser ses bagages, se socialiser. Mais il faut être suffisamment mobile pour aller de ressources en ressources. Cette mobilité représente 10 à 15 km à pied pour jour en moyenne. Elle n’est possible que si l’état de santé général, et celui des pieds en particulier, est bon. La santé des pieds passe par leur hygiène (accès aux sanitaires et aux soins), des chaussures adaptées, et enfin des chaussettes propres et chaudes.

En réfléchissant sur le déficit entre le peu de chaussettes dont disposent les associations et le besoin terrain, j’ai imaginé un modèle par lequel les consommateurs bienveillants et solidaires pourraient offrir une paire de chaussettes chaque fois qu’ils en achetaient une pour eux-mêmes. C’est comme ça qu’est né l’idée de Bonpied. 

Bonpied est une marque de chaussettes fabriquées en France qui donne une paire de chaussettes aux sans-abris pour chaque paire achetée. Ce modèle Buy one give one est maintenant bien installé aux Etats-Unis pour les chaussures (Tom’s shoes), les lunettes (Warby Parker), etc. C’est une sous-catégorie des DNVB (Digitally Native Vertical Brands) avec un modèle DTC (Direct To Consumer). Ces canaux de distribution directs permettent une intimité entre la marque et sa communauté. Ils  économisent les marges des intermédiaires. Et mettent sur le marché deux paires pour chaque paire effectivement vendue.

Le déclic pour lancer la marque a été un échange avec mes amis designers textiles Catherine et Dominique Le Bagousse qui sont basés à Nantes. Ils ont complètement adhéré au concept et ont accepté de s’investir pour lancer cette marque avec moi. C’était il y a un peu plus d’un an. Depuis nous avons fait une campagne de crowdfunding juste avant l’été 2019 (qui a dépassé son objectif de plus de 20%) et nous avons lancé le site internet www.bonpied.eu à la mi-octobre 2019. A date nous en sommes à près de 1600 paires de chaussettes données à des associations au contact des sans-abris. Quand on sait que l’INSEE recensait 143 000 SDF en 2013 et que les français achètent 6 paires par an en moyenne, le besoin terrain n’est pas loin d’un million de paires par an !

Au-delà de notre impact social, nous nous sommes très tôt penchés sur notre impact environnemental. Ainsi nous collaborons avec la marque française Kindy afin de valoriser leurs stocks invendus. Ces invendus ont déjà eu un coût environnemental pour leur fabrication et il s’agit maintenant de les rendre utiles (au lieu d’en fabriquer des nouvelles). Nous rachetons ces invendus exclusivement pour nos dons aux associations.

Enfin nous venons de lancer le modèle « Sacha » qui est fabriqué à partir de fils issus du recyclage de coton et de bouteilles en plastique. 

La production du fil de coton recyclé commence par la collecte des déchets textiles issus de la production de textiles et de vêtements. Ces tissus sont ensuite séparés par couleur. Ces mélanges de couleurs sont coupés et mélangés pour former des fils à l'aide de machines. 

Par ailleurs les bouteilles en plastique sont broyées, effilées et rembobinées en fil.

Ces processus de fabrication des fils permettent de réduire :

les déchets non exploités (coton et bouteilles plastiques)

la consommation d'eau et sa pollution

la consommation d'énergie

l'utilisation de produits chimiques pour la teinture

l'émission de gaz à effet de serre

Les chaussettes « Sacha » sont éco-responsables en plus d’être solidaires du fait de leur faible impact écologique.

Je voudrais finir avec un conseil très prosaïque : pour vous convaincre, vous lecteur/lectrice, de l’importance des chaussettes pour les sans-abris, faites tout simplement le test vous-même. Acheter un pack de chaussettes et proposez une paire à chaque personne à la rue que vous croisez. C’est un objet léger, peu encombrant et qui leur sera toujours utile. La personne sera surprise de votre compréhension de ses besoins réels. Et si vous êtes plusieurs centaines à le faire après avoir lu cet article, vous aurez un impact immédiat et qui sait, vous initierez un contact qui pourrait se prolonger dans la durée ?

Sandrine Vergnory-Mion, MBA INSEAD 02D Co-Founder, Bonpied

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Une Grange monastique du XXI siècle, un projet d’entrepreneuriat au féminin au service de l’écologie intégrale : « Quand la vulnérabilité devient une force créatrice »

Avant de partir à l’INSEAD, j’ai séjourné deux semaines à l’Abbaye de Boulaur, monastère cistercien niché dans le Gers afin de « me ressourcer ». Et voilà que je découvre une communauté de jeunes et dynamiques religieuses, entrepreneuses et agricultrices, qui se sont lancées dans un projet inouï, telle une « start-up du XII siècle, façon XXIème siècle » ! 

Les sœurs qui vendent des produits fermiers et accueillent des visiteurs à l’hôtellerie monastique ont décidé de relever le défi lié à leur succès. Confrontées à la croissance de leur communauté et aux besoins de financement engendrés, les 27 religieuses ont travaillé depuis plusieurs mois à leur « ambition stratégique » des prochaines décennies. Souhaitant renouer avec l’audace des origines de leur ordre, elles ont créé le projet « Grange 21 » : bâtir une « grange cistercienne » à l’image des granges du moyen-âge ; une ferme laboratoire, véritable pôle de développement économique, social et territorial, lien d’enracinement de la culture et de la spiritualité. 

Le projet s’articule autour de plusieurs axes : écologie, patrimoine, économie, entreprenariat féminin et société. Les sœurs nourrissent l’objectif de faire vivre un site exceptionnel inscrit aux monuments historiques tout en assurant l'existence quotidien de la communauté actuelle et future. L’agrandissement des installations permettra aussi d’accueillir davantage d’hôtes à l’Abbaye, venus seuls ou en famille, le temps d’une « pause spirituelle » ou simplement d’un repos.

Un modèle de gouvernance bien inspirant pour les entreprises.

Rodées aux brainstormings et réflexions collectives, les moniales qui allient travaux manuels et prière (7 offices par jour), conseils externes et convictions internes, ont mûri leur projet en veillant à la pleine adhésion de chacune d'entre elles : sensibilité personnelle, cheminement propre, réticences et suggestions particulières. Patience, écoute, silence et parole ont abouti à un consensus aujourd’hui porté par toutes. Ainsi des fragilités et nombreux obstacles ont été transformés en opportunités fécondes. Un modèle de gouvernance bien inspirant pour les entreprises !

Le BP indique très précisément l’augmentation des capacités de production : de 6 à 24 vaches, de 6 à 12 porcs, de 2,5 à 17 t de fromages, de 1 à 5t de pâtés, de 4 à 8t de confitures et de 0,5 à 2t de farine. Les sœurs souhaitent multiplier par 4 le CA et le nombre de clients grâce notamment à la progression des ventes à la ferme du monastère et au développement de nouveaux canaux de distribution : vente en ligne, restauration locale, réseau des magasins monastiques.

Aussi se sont-elles engagées dans un processus de levée de fonds de plusieurs millions, une opération spontanément relayée par un formidable buzz médiatique, assez inédit pour cette Communauté vouée au silence et à l’intériorité. S’ajoute même un chantier participatif. 

Face à une société en quête de sens et d’écologie authentique, Grange 21 fascine et suscite un enthousiasme inouï auprès d’un public très étendu.

Le premier coup de pioche pour construire la nouvelle étable a été donné en mai 2020. Retrouvez en images cette histoire étonnante sur leur site : www.grange21.org

Valérie de Launay, AMP INSEAD 15 MAR Conseil en Gouvernance, organisation et relations humaines

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“Collaboration is the System Change” Developing advanced and sophisticated collaborations is needed to tackle the societal challenges of our century

The need for more collaboration to create value in a complex world

Photo by Darrel

Blue Ocean strategies have considerably helped companies move beyond a world of aggressive competition; as a consequence, their frontiers, formally considered as essential strongholds, are blurring. It enables the most mature ones to even develop further and increase their ability to create value by implementing unexpected multi-stakeholder collaborations. 

Meanwhile, the world faces a number of unprecedented social and environmental challenges. As most of the underlying issues are not stand-alone situations, they should be seen as wicked problems with several interdependencies playing out. Our capacity to bridge our differences and to develop new levels of collaboration actually represents one of the biggest opportunities to tackle such complex challenges and deliver systemic change.

It is already visible in the creation of more and more collaborative actions on a local, regional, national and international scale. And if anything, Covid 19 only increased the trend, with initiatives such as the impressive work between an Italian hospital, a research institute, a 3D FabLab and the sports giant Decathlon, who together transformed snorkeling masks into emergency ventilators in a weeks’ time. 

Collaborating is complex: 5 typical barriers

Progress has been made to understand the intricacies of collaboration but there is still a long way to go the reach an adequate level of sophistication. There is an overall agreement that collaboration is tough, and consequently that it takes more time but, when it succeeds, it creates more value. 

There are different types of collaborations, they are at different stages, with different needs and solutions, and they cover a whole spectrum of objectives, formats and opportunities. Despite those differences, 5 typical barriers are generally observed: 

Strong focus on own interest from each partner;

Stakeholder dominance, often from 1 direct partner who brings in most of the resources of the collaboration, which often results in resistance and distrust from other vital key players;

Insufficient resources: funding, organizational capacity, specific collaboration expertise to bring the collaboration to the next level; this often results in the decreasing commitment of the partners already pretty soon in the process

Too homogeneous group (‘us knows us’) which limits access to complementary perspectives & resources;

Collaboration speeding into action, taking insufficient time to develop the collaboration in depth (e.g. build trust, develop shared values) which can result in time-consuming tensions later on.

Moving towards more sophisticated collaborations

Lessons from existing collaborative initiatives are being collected and some early best practices are being defined, to overcome the typical barriers: 

Partners must pay (much) more attention to the collaborative process. When the collaboration is still emerging, or when it enters a new phase, an independent trusted facilitator can help focus on that process. Without such support, it has been noticed that the failure rate of emerging collaborations is much higher. 

Each collaboration is unique, and it is wicked, but polyphony (i.e. diversity of partners) makes all the difference. Partners must therefore be aware of their blind spots and unlearn to follow the lead of the usual suspects (i.e. the players who are the most visible, successful, privileged, visible, etc.), in order to listen instead to the unheard voices. 

Time is not money: building an effective collaboration takes time; rushing into action often leads to roadblocks along the way. In a world that considers speed and efficiency as some kind of Graal, it is tough to let go and to follow a pace that is set by the lowest common denominator of each partners’ speed at any point in time. But collaboration success depends on it. 

Trust is the cornerstone of any collaborative project. It is the very first lesson that INSEAD teaches MBA students. From the first day, students are ‘forced’ into fixed unlikely (highly polyphonic) study groups and throughout the first terms, they learn to collaborate until social, cultural, professional differences don’t matter anymore but instead become an asset to deliver better value. In any collaboration, partners must learn to build high level of trust, which requires step by step commitments. It begins by knowing each other intimately and by taking some distance from own interest. Partners then can start aligning their purpose and develop shared values. 

If the world needs more collaboration between polyphonic partners, we, INSEAD alumni, are best prepared for developing a strong and sophisticated collaborative ecosystem. As our dean, Ilian Mihov, said: “If not now, when? If not us, who?”

Marion Pelletier, MBA INSEAD 08J Co-founder, The Pond & The Waterfalls

[flash-impact-for-good]

L’arbre qui tombe fait plus de bruit que la forêt qui pousse

J’ai découvert ce proverbe africain il y a quelques années quand je dirigeais Uber au Maroc et il a tout de suite eu une forte résonance pour moi. Il m’a permis de rationaliser et de verbaliser ce que je vivais et pressentais intuitivement sans arriver à l’exprimer clairement. 

Dans le contexte d’alors, les lobbys de taxis et détenteurs d’agrément faisaient grand bruit en dénonçant la mort annoncée d’une profession tandis qu’en silence, des milliers de femmes et d’hommes, dont d’anciens chauffeurs de taxis, retrouvaient leur dignité au travers d’un emploi plus rémunérateur et plus valorisant. 

Aujourd’hui, je suis dans un contexte différent. J’ai quitté le Maroc, j’ai changé de métier et de secteur mais à la lueur de la crise du COVID et de mon engagement vis-à-vis de la Fondation Mozaik, qui travaille à l’inclusion économique des jeunes de quartiers défavorisés, j’ai retrouvé avec force l’essence de ce proverbe. 

Les médias, les flux LinkedIn ou Facebook ou les messages Whatsapp nous abreuvent d’informations angoissantes sur la crise sanitaire en cours, la crise économique en gestation et le mur de la dette à venir. Et pourtant, tous les jours, je vois et j’entends les bruissements subtils d’une forêt qui pousse, celle de l’économie sociale et solidaire (« ESS »). 

En premier lieu, je constate une forte mobilisation des acteurs de l’ESS. A la fondation Mozaik, j’ai été le témoin privilégié de l’énergie formidable qu’ont déployé les équipes dès le début du confinement. La plupart des formations et accompagnements de groupes ont été basculés du présentiel au digital, les coachings et mentorats individuels ont été renforcés, l’effort sur les projets spécifiques maintenu, dont l’ambitieux Plan 1000 Jeunes et l’équipe recrutement a mis les bouchées doubles pour mener la campagne alternance dans les meilleures conditions possibles, ce dispositif étant une passerelle essentielle vers l’emploi. En dehors de la fondation, je découvre tous les jours de nouvelles initiatives associatives : maraudes renforcées, paniers solidaires, initiatives collectives telles que « Inventons le Monde d’après » etc.

Ensuite, je vois une armée de bénévoles se lever, prête à combattre la crise par la solidarité : les bénévoles de la Fondation Mozaik se sont mobilisés davantage, de nombreux citoyens se sont engagés dans la réserve civique ou auprès d’associations locales. L’entraide s’est également organisée hors structures via des initiatives individuelles : coachings gratuits, cours et webinars en ligne, courses entre voisins. Une tendance de fonds s’est également confirmée chez les indépendants : l’alternance entre missions de conseil solidaires et missions plus traditionnelles. 

Enfin, beaucoup de pourvoyeurs de fonds et d’entreprises hors ESS se sont montrés à la hauteur de l’enjeu. Les partenaires de Mozaik ont maintenu voire renforcé leurs engagements et plus largement, de nombreuses entreprises se sont mobilisées au travers de dons et de mécénat de compétences à l’instar d’EDF, de Suez, de KPMG, Caisse d’Epargne et bien d’autres. 

Je crois sincèrement que ce changement est une tendance de fond et non une collection d’initiatives individuelles ou collectives éphémères et sporadiques. Pour ma part, je continuerai de planter des graines et d’essaimer pour contribuer à faire pousser cette forêt. 

Meryem Belqziz, MBA INSEAD 11D Advisor & Coach

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Play your part in building more diverse and inclusive teams | hire outlier talent

Photo by João Jesus 

In this article, we tell some encouraging stories about headhunters who took the brave step of recommending candidates who did not “fit the box” and who undoubtedly presented an increased risk for the client companies.

However, the risk paid off in every case, and clients, candidates, and shareholders are happy. 

We examine via the stories of Erin, who got the CEO job, despite having baby-blues, no sleep and no clothes that fit her, or of the incredibly creative headhunter Fabrice, INSEAD MBA’02, who considered 3000 profiles before homing in on that of Ian Rogers, now the Chief Digital Officer of LVMH, the issues that often freeze companies and headhunters in the paradigm of “risk mitigation”, but also the huge leaps forward that can be made when another prism is applied in this area.

We hope that you as individuals will feel more confident about putting yourselves forward for roles where you might see the fit, even if the recruiter will need more of an explanation. And we certainly encourage all those in the position of being able to make your own hires to consider those “outlier” candidates as a matter of course, and possibly even to review and revise your definition of “outlier”.

To know more, access the full article

Claire Harbour, MBA INSEAD 92J Coach

Antoine Tirard, MBA INSEAD 97D Talent Management Adviser, Leadership Consultant, Executive Coach and Author

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Sustainable Fashion and the case for Made-To-Order, customizable items

Googling “Sustainable fashion” yields 8.5 million results. So quite a relevant topic today. And it touches on both environmental and ethical labor considerations.

Environmental and labor practices considerations in the fashion industry

The fashion industry is considered as one of the most environmentally challenging ones. If either the 2nd most polluting industry in the world [1,2] after oil or the fourth-worst in terms of environmental impacts after housing, mobility, and food [3], it does not really matter much. 

When nearly 20% of global wastewater is produced by the fashion industry [5] and 20,000 liters is the amount of water needed to produce one kilogram of cotton, equivalent to a single t-shirt and pair of jeans [6] the environmental case is hard to miss. 

Every year more than 150 billion (and rising) garments are produced, equivalent to 20 new items per person [2]. 

With fast fashion clothes worn on average 5 times and kept for only 35 days (vs. 10 times for the average garment [7]) and, as an example, the average American disposing on average of 35kg of clothing per year [2], it is no surprise that about half of the purchased items are thrown away within one year only [7]. 

Also, some high-end brands send unsold items directly to incineration for fear of brand equity dilution.

On top of it, additional waste comes from transforming raw materials into fabrics, with cotton alone being the world’s single largest pesticide-consuming crop, using 24% of all insecticides and 11% of all pesticides globally [5], while another 15% of waste is left on the factory floor at the time of cutting [8].

As for labor conditions of those involved in the manufacturing of apparel and shoes, it would simply suffice to recall the tragedy of Rana Plaza [10] and how far we still are from equitable and fair labor practices even ten years later.

A more sustainable way forward, 

Fortunately, positive initiatives toward more sustainable fashion have been blossoming.

On the environmental side, recycling, rental clothes, pre-owned are words becoming increasingly common. However, all of this is no easy solution. Recycling is easier said than done; only 1% of items are actually recycled into new garments. Renting garments can apply to a few items but not to every-day basics. Buying pre-owned ones can marginally extend the lifetime of only durable enough garments and do not appeal to the vast majority of consumers.

On the labor side, despite the many initiatives announced to provide better working conditions in developing countries, the incentives to cut corners are still high as labor is a major cost item in the fashion industry.

An even better model: Made-To-Order + Customization 

Think of the following: a garment or a pair of shoes made-to-order, based on customer’s specs and crafted by workers being fairly paid to create long-lasting items in a country with solid labor laws. In one shot, no more overproduction and the pollution that goes with it (only what is ordered is actually produced), no more mass-produced items not matching market demand ending up in incineration facilities or landfills, no more waste associated with items not being worn or worn only a few times, no more labor exploitation, no more items that fall apart after being worn only a few times.

Matteo Altobelli, MBA INSEAD 98D Co-founder & Partner, Tilden

Article initially published here: https://www.jclutz.com/en/jc-lutz-world/2019/3/15/a-quick-guide-to-choosing-a-new-pair-of-sneakers-ak2cl-m2sc8-baerg

Sources:

[1] The Economist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko_BZhIpI1Q 

[2] Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2015/12/03/making-climate-change-fashionable-the-garment-industry-takes-on-global-warming/#78e7f25279e4 

[3] WRAP, 2017, Banbury, Mapping clothing impacts in Europe: the environmental cost, prepared by Sarah Gray http://www.ecap.eu.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Mapping- clothing-impacts-in-Europe.pdf 

[4] Permanent Style https://www.permanentstyle.com/2019/05/how-sustainable-is-luxury-bespoke-clothing.html?mc_cid=f646c6eb5a&mc_eid=b7989a9f72  

[5] UN [United Nations Partnership on Sustainable Fashion and the SDG’s]

[6] WWF https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/cotton 

[7] GFA https://globalfashionagenda.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/GFA17_Call-to-action_Poluc-brief_FINAL_9May.pdf   

[8] EDGE https://edgexpo.com/fashion-industry-waste-statistics/# 

[9] European Parliament  https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2019/633143/EPRS_BRI(2019)633143_EN.pdf 

[10] Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Dhaka_garment_factory_collapse  

[11] GFA https://globalfashionagenda.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Pulse-of-the-Fashion-Industry_2017.pdf 

[12] Traid.org https://traid.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/impacts_of_clothing_factsheet_23percent.pdf

[flash-impact-for-good]

Empowering people for the ecological transition / leisure

Photo by Alena Koval

A few months ago, following a conference on the prospects and challenges of the tourism and cultural sectors - before COVID-19 -, I asked myself the question about what would be an ideal world for me today: a world without problems of food, energy, transport, with an abundance of biodiversity and without pollution. That would be beautiful and perfect! It was a dream!

I woke up and saw around me that people, for the most part, shared this ideal, but they also found -like I did-, that there was a big gap between this ideal universe and reality, and this despite the announcements and promises made by the authorities, governments, businesses, political parties, international organizations, ....

Most people are dissatisfied with the current situation and want to act in favor of environmental protection. It is ultimately the citizens of this world that will really make the difference. It is indeed for each individual to fight his/her own battle against climate change.

This is how and why ZeroCC was born: to get into action by giving people the ability to offset his/her carbon footprint related to the leisure activities he/she has decided to engage in. It could be a visit to the museum, an exhibition in a National Monument, or a sporting event in his/her hometown.

Everyday established and new companies are providing services to governments and corporations in the area of energy efficiency and carbon footprint calculation and offsets. Methodologies exist and they are deployed at large. At the level of the individual smartphone, apps are flooding the digital space providing carbon compensation services.

In ZeroCC we believe a third way could prove complementary to those mentioned above and result in larger and faster benefits in the fight against climate change. Our focus is on leisure activities, namely those involving culture, arts, and sports.

Our vision calls for a society in which every person will manage its own environmental footprint, be it carbon, biodiversity or waste.

“Give us the tools and we will do the job” said Sir Winston Churchill. ZeroCC sees it as its mission to provide digital and collaborative tools that will make the ecological transition a reality for each person.

Our first service concerns climate change.

ZeroCC stands for “zero-carbon, certified” how does it work?

All leisure activity institutions are aware that the sustainability of the business needs to be aligned with the sustainability efforts made all around them. They are increasingly aware of their energy consumption, they make energy efficiency efforts a “must do” in their priorities and will inevitably translate the result of the above into a carbon footprint. At some point, all of them will have carbon targets.

By calculating the carbon footprint generated by an average visitor, we can propose to all visitors the possibility to fund the compensation of such a carbon footprint equivalent at the time of booking or purchasing a ticket online, in a seamless transaction and as part of the ordinary e-ticketing process.

In this way the customer is empowered to manage his/her own carbon footprint; he/she becomes effectively engaged in the fight against climate change and the leisure activity institutions to pursue their zero-carbon trajectories.

Events, culture, sport, and leisure activities create positive emotions for visitors or spectators that we can engage in the fight against climate change. This is a market of 300 million visits per year in France and more than 3 billion visits per year worldwide.

We created ZeroCC in early 2020, we have established key partnerships and are starting our commercial campaign in July.

Stay tuned for more news on ZeroCC!

Cesar Ortiz Sotelo, MBA INSEAD 85D Founding Partner, HALLCROSS PARTNERS

[flash-impact-for-good]

A world tour of innovations for urban bicycle riding

Image from S. Hermann & F. Richter

This article travels the world to see how cities, companies, and start-ups are fostering the use of bicycles for personal transportation and delivery of goods.

We are gradually getting out from quarantine, getting around on errands, and commuting back to work. Riding a bicycle is a good alternative to respect physical distancing while getting back in shape after several weeks of staying at home.

This time may be a chance for an environmentally friendly mode of transportation to strive in busy cities. Still, there are many issues to address: public space availability, safety, comfort, maintenance, and parking. Let’s see how different parts of the world are tackling these issues.

Environmental benefits

Freight and personal transportation is responsible for 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions [1]. Environmentally, a bicycle is a symbol of decarbonized transportation and sustainable cities. Bicycles are an eco-friendly means of transportation that requires no fossil fuels.

As an energy-efficient form of transportation, bicycle uses renewable human power in the most efficient way compared to other alternatives to move people and product from point A to point B: there are no greenhouse gas emissions emitted per km on a bike compared to 220g of CO2eq per km in a car [2].

Safe bike lanes

Cycling is an efficient way of using scarce space in urban areas. However, governments and cities have been struggling to give more space to bicycles. This is a chicken and egg problem. There are not enough bicycles to reserve them space and there are not enough bike lanes for bike riding to go mainstream.

Now everything has changed. Many cities across the world have created additional dedicated bike lanes post Covid-19.  

The UK government has put forward a £2 billion package to foster cycling and walking. Pop-up bike lanes with protected space for cycling, safer junctions, and cycle and bus-only corridors will be created.

Bogota, the capital city of Columbia stands 12th in 2019 Copenhagenize index, which ranks bicycle-friendly cities. Bogota has extended its formerly Sunday only Ciclovia program to all days of the week and added 80 km of bike lanes to its 550 km of existing ones.

In New York City, officials have announced that up to 100 miles of streets will have extended bike lanes and sidewalks.

There are precautions cyclists need to adhere to in order to make their commute as safe and stress-free as possible: knowing the route in advance, being alert of the environment, putting a helmet on, wearing reflective clothing, and having appropriate lighting to be seen on the road.

Secured parking

Where and how can you confidently park your bicycle knowing it will not be stolen, or damaged by weather, and will not disturb pedestrian traffic? Parking is indeed also an issue. The cities are struggling to keep up with the demand and manage sometimes anarchic parking.

In the Netherlands, a giant bike parking facility is conveniently located directly next to Utrecht Central Station, Stationsplein. It caters space for 12,500 bikes.

Automated underground bicycle parking systems are popular in China and Japan. The machinery frees up space on the surface. One system can hold 200 bikes.  To see it working, watch this “futuristic” video.

When you can’t park or when you want to travel longer distances, you may take your bike with you in a bus or a train. This can prove difficult in busy public transit. The region of Seattle has found a solution. Bikes can be installed at the front of buses.

Bicycles on buses in Seattle

Access to bikes

First things first. You need a bike. There are many ways to get one, from buying to rental or leasing.

Most large cities now have bike rental services. Rental systems can be with fixed stations or dockless, whereby bikes can be left anywhere.

Itaú’by Tembici in São Paulo, Buenos Aires, and Santiago or Velib by Smovengo in Paris both provide traditional and electric bikes. Riders park them at pre-defined spaces in bike stations.

Free Float bike rental has suffered from theft and damage. Few are still operating. Among them Dott in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Poland, Mobike in China.

Tembici bike stations in São Paulo

Electric bicycles or e-bikes participate in making bike mainstream. Less effort is needed to drive longer distances or carry stuff and you can stay fresh after riding your bike. However, electric bikes come at a hefty price compared to traditional ones: €500 to €3000 for an electric bike compared to as low as €200 for a traditional one.

Leasing models make electric bikes more affordable. Such a model is rolled out by the Dutch company, Swapfiets in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. For €75 per month, you get an electric bike of your own with the additional benefit of including repair and maintenance.

Repair and maintenance

The rental and leasing models leave the hassle of repairing and maintaining to the lessor or the rental company: a big advantage. Repairing a flat tire, adjusting brakes or derailleur, or tightening the chains are common tasks of the everyday cyclist. They are not easy when you are not into “do it yourself” or are not equipped with the proper tools (and need to stay clean in your business attire).

Going to the nearest bike shop is an obvious choice. Alternatively, you may rely on online platform that puts you in contact with a technician that comes and repairs your bike at your place. Cyclofix or Repair and Run are such services operating in major cities in France.

Bikes for all needs

Bikes, once all similar now come in very different shapes to cater to various needs:  design and performance, delivery of goods, kid transportation, and city commuting.

The number of electric bike firms is growing. High-end ones compete on design and functionalities.

Angell bikes come with a secured system against theft and modern and slick design.

One of the models of Moustache Bikes provides an ultra-low stepover frame that makes it easy to get on and off the saddle at each red light in the town.

Vanmoof bikes include automatic electronic gear shifting and integrated anti-theft technology.

A removable battery built seamlessly into the frame is Cowboys bikes’ signature detail.

In addition to these high-end electric bikes, you can find cargo bikes designed to transport children, carry your groceries or deliver a product to e-commerce customers: to name a few Italian Measy, French Douze Cycles, Dutch Urban Arrow or California based Yuba bikes.

Finally, folding bikes such as those of British Brompton are useful if you have limited storage place. It also makes multi-modal transportation possible.

Bikes at the office

Riding a bike to work is what 62% of Copenhagen citizens do every day. Without the appropriate infrastructure at work (parking space, storage space, showers, bike-friendly culture), it can be hard to change habits.  Luckily, more and more employers are working hard to foster bike commuting, a more reliable, healthy, and environmentally friendly alternative to driving.

Companies may provide for a bike fleet in addition to or replacement to a car fleet.  Start-ups have emerged to help organizations set-up and manage such fleets such as the French  Zenride or Green On.

Beyond cities

Innovation and progress are happening all over the world to foster bike riding as a mode of transportation.

Give it a try. Riding a bike brings back a sense of freedom to a daily commute. No need to have the exotic expensive bikes and gear to be a cyclist. In addition, a bike will help you rediscover the joy of stepping out of the door and exploring your surroundings like the breathtaking roads of Cormet de Roselend.

Corinne Bach, MBA INSEAD 05D Entrepreneur in ecological transition

Recap of innovations

References

[1] Fifth assessment report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2014, summary for Policymakers, and technical summary.

[2] There are different greenhouse gas. Their warming power as well as their persistence in the atmosphere are very different. Scientists have defined an equivalent between the different greenhouse gas and CO2. This way, greenhouse gas emissions can be expressed in one common unit, i.e., gram CO2 equivalent (g CO2eq). CO2 has been chosen as it represents three-quarters of total greenhouse gas emissions released in the atmosphere each year.

This article was posted in June 2020 on Transition Route - Ecological transition blog for resilient businesses