Blog posts by Jeffrey Hollender,
featuring posts about sustainability,
social responsibility, entrepreneurship,
and more.
Recent Posts
Learning to Change the World: The Social Impact of One Laptop Per Child
Just released today, Learning to Change the World by Charles Kane, Walter Bender, Jody Cornish and Neal Donahue delves into the implications of one of the largest social entrepreneurial initiatives, One Laptop Per Child. From Amazon's description: Learning to Change...
Rethinking Consumption Across the Globe
For those in the sustainable products industry, it has been a long running and often elusive challenge to understand the role consumers play in creating a thriving “green” marketplace. During the holiday season when shopping reaches a fever pitch is perhaps the most...
The most evil organization in the world
I’ve said it before, but this quote floored me. Never expected this much transparency from one of the world’s most opaque organizations, the US Chamber of Commerce. From the Washington Monthly: [A] large part of what the Chamber sells is political cover. For...
Seventh Generation’s “Tribute to a Visionary”
After a two year absence, I was invited to return to Seventh Generation to celebrate my induction into the Social Venture Network Hall of Fame. I was honored when Seventh Generation CEO John Replogle gave an exceptional speech to commemorate the occasion and I thought...
Survey: Sex, Condoms and Sustainability
These days, many products—personal care items, food, etc.—contain various chemicals and additives that, while legal in small amounts, may have effects on human health that aren't fully understood. One area that has not received much attention is condoms. Please...
CEO Activist, or Just Another PR Stunt?
In late September of this year, H&M CEO Karl-Johan Persson met with People’s Republic of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to discuss an increase in textile worker wages and recommend annual wage reviews. Why would the CEO of a successful fashion giant want...
The Impact of a Corporate Culture of Sustainability on Corporate Behavior and Performance
A Harvard Business School “Working Paper” by Robert G. Eccles, Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim investigates the effect of a corporate culture of sustainability on multiple facets of corporate behavior and performance outcomes. The authors find that corporations...
Fraud: Study Concluded Organic Food Isn’t Better for You!
"Make no mistake, the Stanford organics study is a fraud," says Mike Adams of Naturalnews.com and Anthony Gucciardi of Naturalsociety.com. "The mainstream media has fallen for an elaborate scientific hoax that sought to destroy the credibility of organic foods by...
Impact Investing 101
Sara Johnson, a Village Capital program associate, has provided all who want an introduction, guide and overview to Impact Investing a great service by selecting the 17 best articles she discovered in her own exploration of the field. As she wrote in her introduction,...
A Man That the Universe Will Miss
Gregor Barnum, my close friend, recently passed away. Gregor was a self-discoverer, a psychoanalyst of himself and of others. He was kind and gentle, though his mind was bold and audacious. He had a sixth sense for finding good people, and just as acute a sense of...
The Vanishing Entrepreneur
Kudos to Ed Kilgore, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly, for his review of “The Slow-Motion Collapse of American Entrepreneurship," by New America Foundation’s Barry Lynn and Lina Khan. The insightful article, which appeared in Washington Monthly’s...
Creating Good Work
Cheryl L. Dorsey, the president of Echoing Green, notes in her forward to Ron Schultz’s latest book Creating Good Work that it arrives at a critical time in the relatively short history of the social entrepreneurial movement. As Jeff Trexler points out in his...
In the Soul of Seoul: On the Frontline of Corporate Responsibility in Asia
I traveled halfway around the world to keynote The First Corporate Social Responsibility International Forum ever held in Korea. Having never been to Korea, I’d like to share a little about the country and its culture. Korea is at the same time a new and an old...
Made in Africa
TOMS Shoes has taken no shortage of heat for the lack of sustainability of its business model. As Cheryl Davenport writes in her Fast Company story, “The Toms buy-one-give-one model does not actually solve a social problem. An increasing number of foreign aid...
Towards Zero Impact Growth
Most of what passes for “sustainability” isn’t actually sustainable at all. We have endlessly – and dangerously confused – “less bad” with “good.” Whether looking at a product or a company, sustainability ends up being mostly about less pollution, less waste, and the...
Full Cost Accounting
Our current system of pricing products and services ensures that society perpetually makes poor choices. Today we exclude most of the adverse social and environmental costs of producing goods from their price. The cost to clean up the groundwater pollution resulting...
The Price of Inequality
"Much of what has gone on can only be described by the words ‘moral deprivation.’ Something wrong happened to the moral compass of so many people working in the financial sector and elsewhere." The Price of Inequality, Joseph E. Stiglitz By now we know most of...
At the Democratic Convention
Leaving Vermont yesterday, I never made it to Charlotte for the Democratic National Convention. After a five-hour delay in Washington, I gave up and spent the night. The delay allowed me to briefly watch the Convention and hear Julian Castro, the mayor of San Antonio...
Our Future Depends On This!
No question about it, money in politics is destroying our democracy, corrupting our national priorities, and placing the future of our nation in jeopardy. Big money has become one of the most dangerous forces we face -- and the problem is only getting worse....
Let’s Draft Our Kids
As we explore and innovate new solutions to the social and environmental problems we face, sometimes we have to think way outside the box. Where are there assets and resources laying idle, underused, or mis-deployed that could be captured to address our many...
More Companies Discover that Sustainability is Profitable
In May, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in partnership with the Boston Consulting Group, issued its third annual Sustainability and Innovation Global Executive Study. The survey gathered input from more than 4,000 executives and managers across all...