Because Professor Olga Hawn is an expert on corporate social responsibility and sustainability, I started off by asking her about whether the movement on CSR has been a success or failure. She explained that it is both in the following senses: It’s a success in that there are some great examples of companies that have deployed at scale and changed comprehensively to become more sustainable, although what that means exactly hasn’t yet been pinned down entirely. It’s also a failure due to the enormous backlash against CSR initiatives in companies that we sometimes refer to as “greenwashing.” Organizationally, large publicly-traded companies have professional communications departments that issue reports that are sometimes not tied to reality. It takes leadership at all levels – not just at the top but throughout the corporation – to achieve transformation from an industrial-era, profit-driven business model to a truly sustainable model.

Olga also briefly discussed her recent work on ESG metrics. It’s the absence of comparability in these metrics – the absence of well-understood tradeoffs – that can expose a corporation to a lot of criticism from both the CSR movement and from investors. Companies tend to focus on what they are good at, and this may lead them to intensify their focus on SDGs (or other approaches to value creation) that a critical community like CSR watchdogs or investment analysts may not favor. Without strong, comparable metrics that account for tradeoffs, it’s going to be tough for large companies to succeed at sustainability.

In the end, Olga finds optimism in her classrooms and in smaller companies. Green tech is finally taking off. She’s most optimistic about tech innovators and other small organizations that design everything they do on principles of sustainability.

My sincere thanks to Professor Olga Hawn for her terrific leadership on these critical topics.