Corporate Social Responsibility

This Danish foundation gives away $1.3 billion annually – and their secret isn't efficiency ratios, it's something far more radical: They implement nothing. Behind this Danish foundation's rapid rise is Ozempic – the blockbuster diabetes and weight-loss drug that's generated unprecedented profits for Novo Nordisk. The Novo Nordisk Foundation, which owns about a quarter of the pharmaceutical giant, has become one of the world's wealthiest charitable foundations with assets around $167 billion. Yet rather than hiring armies of staff like other major philanthropies, they've gone the opposite direction. In a recent interview, their Chief Scientific Officer for Health Flemming Konradsen revealed their secret to me: They don't implement – they only work through partners. Zero programs. Zero direct service delivery. The model: ➡️ Find what already works  ➡️ Partner with governments who own the strategy ➡️ Create sustainable markets, not dependency  ➡️ Stay for 15+ years, not 3-year cycles Example: Their school feeding programs create permanent markets for local farmers while training health workers and scaling AI solutions across continents. The hard part? Saying no to putting your name on things. Letting partners get the credit. Trusting that influence matters more than control. For development professionals: This approach creates new opportunities. These ultra-efficient funders skip the usual suspects and source partners who can be trusted with strategy, not just execution. They're looking for implementers who think like owners. If you can demonstrate government relationships, long-term thinking, and the ability to build sustainable systems (not just deliver projects), you become invaluable to this new breed of funders. What could your organization accomplish if it stopped trying to do everything itself? Disclaimer: I’ve edited this post as it’s been flagged that Novo Nordisk Foundation has 250 employees. #Philanthropy #Partnership #Foundation 📷 Novo Nordisk Foundation

When digital dangers become real but you aren't ready.... "Hi I'm Laura, your daughter calls me loser Laura..." The young girl stands awkwardly at the doorstep, her wounded expression revealing the pain of cyberbullying. This pivotal moment from New Zealand's "Keep It Real Online" campaign transforms digital harm into physical reality. ↳One in five young Kiwis are bullied online annually. ↳40% have online interactions with people they've never met in real life. The campaign brings digital threats to parents' doorsteps Effective cybersecurity awareness campaigns highlight crucial principles through impactful storytelling. The best way to fight cybercrime is through awareness and prevention, using statistics, stories, and practical tips. Cyberbullying, juvenile access to inappropriate content, and exposure to online violence represent interconnected cybersecurity challenges that require parental vigilance. Key cybersecurity lessons: ↳Digital threats have tangible impacts on vulnerable users, particularly children and young people. ↳Parents and educators need frameworks to initiate difficult conversations about online safety. ↳Education proves more effective than avoidance when addressing digital dangers. Creating a culture of cybersecurity awareness and responsibility involves recognizing positive behavior and discussing best practices. The main goal of effective campaigns is informing audiences about various online threats including malware, identity theft, phishing, and cyberbullying. Individuals can protect personal information by using strong, unique passwords for online accounts. Educational institutions play an essential role in advancing cybersecurity through instruction, public awareness campaigns, and safe IT infrastructure. Digital literacy remains the key to protection in our increasingly connected world. Emotional storytelling drives behavior change by creating powerful connections that statistics simply cannot match. Share your story: ↳Which campaign stopped you in your tracks? ↳How did it trigger an emotional response that influenced your behavior? ↳Why does it still resonate with you today? 👍 LIKE this post, 🔄 REPOST this to your network and follow me, Monica Jasuja

Sustainability Risk Management Framework 🌎 This framework, adapted from Deloitte and illustrated by Antonio Vizcaya Abdo, presents a clear and structured approach to managing climate-related risks and opportunities in business. As sustainability becomes integral to decision-making, frameworks like this are increasingly essential for ensuring long-term resilience and value creation. The process begins with strategic alignment. It is crucial to evaluate future investments, clarify roles and responsibilities, define risk appetite, and ensure alignment with broader objectives such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The next step focuses on identifying and prioritizing climate-related risks and opportunities. This involves collecting data, consulting stakeholders, defining objectives, and analyzing both physical and transition risks as well as emerging opportunities. A key strength of this framework lies in its integration of metrics, targets, and risk management processes. This ensures that assessments are not isolated but embedded in the organization’s broader strategy and governance structures. Once risks and opportunities are identified, the framework shifts to response design. This phase involves creating tailored mitigation actions and seizing opportunities through short-, medium-, and long-term solutions. To support these actions, the development of key risk indicators (KRIs) is essential. These indicators provide the means to track progress, adjust strategies, and maintain accountability across functions and business units. The final step emphasizes communication and transparency. Whether through standalone reports or integrated sustainability disclosures, clear communication of findings and progress is essential to meet stakeholder expectations and regulatory demands. Effective sustainability risk management is not just about protecting value—it is also about enabling new forms of growth, innovation, and resilience in a changing climate context. Frameworks like this offer a pathway to move from intention to implementation, turning risk into strategic opportunity through structure, foresight, and rigor. #sustainability #sustainable #business #esg #risks

We’re planting trees — but losing biodiversity. Global efforts to restore forests are gathering pace, driven by promises of combating climate change, conserving biodiversity, and improving livelihoods. Yet a recent paper published in Nature Reviews Biodiversity warns that the biodiversity gains from these initiatives are often overstated — and sometimes absent altogether. Forest restoration is at the heart of Target 2 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which aims to place 30% of degraded ecosystems under effective restoration by 2030. But the gap between ambition and outcome is wide. "Biodiversity will remain a vague buzzword rather than an actual outcome" unless projects explicitly prioritize it, the authors caution. Restoration has typically prioritized utilitarian goals such as timber production, carbon sequestration, or erosion control. This bias is reflected in the widespread use of monoculture plantations or low-diversity agroforests. Nearly half of the Bonn Challenge’s forest commitments consist of commercial plantations of exotic species — a trend that risks undermining biodiversity rather than enhancing it. Scientific evidence shows that restoring biodiversity requires more than planting trees. Methods like natural regeneration — allowing forests to recover on their own — can often yield superior biodiversity outcomes, though they face social and economic barriers. By contrast, planting a few fast-growing species may sequester carbon quickly but offers little for threatened plants and animals. Biodiversity recovery is influenced by many factors: the intensity of prior land use, the surrounding landscape, and the species chosen for restoration. Recovery is slow — often measured in decades — and tends to lag for rare and specialist species. Alarmingly, most projects stop monitoring after just a few years, long before ecosystems stabilize. However, the authors say there are reasons for optimism. Biodiversity markets, including emerging biodiversity credit schemes and carbon credits with biodiversity safeguards, could mobilize new financing. Meanwhile, technologies like environmental DNA sampling, bioacoustics, and remote sensing promise to improve monitoring at scale. To turn good intentions into reality, the paper argues, projects must define explicit biodiversity goals, select suitable methods, and commit to long-term monitoring. Social equity must also be central. "Improving biodiversity outcomes of forest restoration… could contribute to mitigating power asymmetries and inequalities," the authors write, citing examples from Madagascar and Brazil. If designed well, forest restoration could help address the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change. But without a deliberate shift, billions of dollars risk being spent on projects that plant trees — and little else. 🔬 Brancalion et al (2025): https://lnkd.in/gG6X36WP

There’s a missed opportunity in the investment world: over 95% of capital remains allocated to non-diverse funds. This leaves diverse-led funds undercapitalized, despite their proven ability to outperform. This disparity isn’t just about fairness — it’s about untapped potential. A report from the National Association of Investment Companies (NAIC) highlights systemic barriers: smaller commitments to diverse-managed funds, higher asset requirements and inconsistent support from corporate and union pension funds. These challenges restrict market growth and limit wealth creation in communities that could benefit most. Addressing these disparities is critical to building a more dynamic and equitable financial ecosystem. When diverse leaders manage funds, they bring unique perspectives, broader networks and innovative strategies that drive returns and create lasting economic impact. This mission is personal to me. Throughout my career, I’ve championed initiatives to expand opportunities for underrepresented entrepreneurs and fund managers. By supporting diverse leadership in finance, we not only unlock growth but also help close the #racialwealthgap and foster sustainable change. It’s time to reimagine how we allocate capital — embracing equality as both a value and a strategy. Together, we can fuel innovation, empower communities and strengthen our economy.

After spending three decades in the aerospace industry, I’ve seen firsthand how crucial it is for different sectors to learn from each other. We no longer can afford to stay stuck in our own bubbles. Take the aerospace industry, for example. They’ve been looking at how car manufacturers automate their factories to improve their own processes. And those racing teams? Their ability to prototype quickly and develop at a breakneck pace is something we can all learn from to speed up our product development. It’s all about breaking down those silos and embracing new ideas from wherever we can find them. When I was leading the Scorpion Jet program, our rapid development – less than two years to develop a new aircraft – caught the attention of a company known for razors and electric shavers. They reached out to us, intrigued by our ability to iterate so quickly, telling me "you developed a new jet faster than we can develop new razors..." They wanted to learn how we managed to streamline our processes. It was quite an unexpected and fascinating experience that underscored the value of looking beyond one’s own industry can lead to significant improvements and efficiencies, even in fields as seemingly unrelated as aerospace and consumer electronics. In today’s fast-paced world, it’s more important than ever for industries to break out of their silos and look to other sectors for fresh ideas and processes. This kind of cross-industry learning not only fosters innovation but also helps stay competitive in a rapidly changing market. For instance, the aerospace industry has been taking cues from car manufacturers to improve factory automation. And the automotive companies are adopting aerospace processes for systems engineering. Meanwhile, both sectors are picking up tips from tech giants like Apple and Google to boost their electronics and software development. And at Siemens, we partner with racing teams. Why? Because their knack for rapid prototyping and fast-paced development is something we can all learn from to speed up our product development cycles. This cross-pollination of ideas is crucial as industries evolve and integrate more advanced technologies. By exploring best practices from other industries, companies can find innovative new ways to improve their processes and products. After all, how can someone think outside the box, if they are only looking in the box? If you are interested in learning more, I suggest checking out this article by my colleagues Todd Tuthill and Nand Kochhar where they take a closer look at how cross-industry learning are key to developing advanced air mobility solutions. https://lnkd.in/dK3U6pJf

We’ve called efficiency the unsung hero of the energy transition in the past. While the energy transition will happen first through the transition of energy usages, like the shift with transport, from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles, or from fuel or gas boilers to heat pumps, we cannot ignore the utmost priority of the energy transition: efficiency. Efficiency is the greatest path to reduce our energy use, our impact on the world’s climate through CO2 emission reduction, and very importantly, the best way to make solid and practical savings. In its most historical form, energy efficiency is about better insulation, to reduce heating (or cooling) loss in buildings like family homes, warehouses, office high rises, and shopping malls. This is useful, but expensive and tedious to realize on existing installations. Digitizing home, buildings, industries and infrastructure brings similar benefits at a much lower cost and a much higher economic return. The combination of IoT, big data, software and AI can significantly reduce energy use and waste by detecting leaky valves, or automatically adjusting heating, lighting, processes and other systems to the number of people present at any given time, using real-time data analysis. It also allows owners to measure precisely progress, report automatically on their energy and sustainability parameters, and benefit from new services through smart grid interaction. And this is just the energy benefit. Automation and digital tools also optimize the processes, safety, reliability, and uptime leading to greater productivity and performance.

Did you know that up to 90% of a company's environmental impact comes from its supply chain? This statistic highlights businesses' massive responsibility to engage with their entire network of suppliers in the fight against climate change. Across industries, we're seeing a growing emphasis on sustainability within supply chains. Whether it's reducing carbon emissions, ensuring ethical sourcing, or increasing transparency, the need for innovation and collaboration is clearer than ever. And by focusing on these areas, companies can make huge strides in reducing their overall environmental footprint. My partner Jungheinrich AG is a good example of this. Instead of focusing solely on their own sustainability goals, they recently extended their efforts to their entire supply chain to take part in a self-assessment. Businesses doing this can ensure transparency and accountability at every level. It also demonstrates that real change is possible when companies work together. If your company could make one change today to engage its suppliers in sustainability, what would it be? I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas. #sustainability #supplychain #innovation

“Biodiversity cannot be measured with a single metric like CO2-eq!” How many times have I heard this sentence and observed the same debate replayed afterwards? Well, yes, but what “biodiversity” should be measured then? This excellent chart summarizes what elements of biodiversity should be measured, lists metrics for each and also provides insights into how so-called “top-down” and “bottom-up” approaches can be used.   The chart packs a lot of very powerful messages. How to read it?   🔎 Let’s start at its centre: it describes What should be measured and gives one example of Metrics for each element: 👉 Biodiversity state, as defined by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) UN Biodiversity: 1️⃣ Ecosystem, which for business is split into condition - measured for instance in #MeanSpeciesAbundance or MSA (see my newsletter on the issue: https://t.ly/eJ2dn) - and extent   2️⃣ Genes, which currently lack proper corporate metrics   3️⃣ Species, usually measured using STAR units   👉 Biodiversity significance: the non-exhaustive list highlights the most important elements, also building from the CBD’s Global Biodiversity Framework 1️⃣ Species risk of extinction: as well as being part of biodiversity state, it is linked to its importance   2️⃣ Protected areas (PA)   3️⃣ Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA): corporate impacts are usually measured in overlap with numbers of both PA and KBA (or directly in hectares of overlap)   4️⃣ Ecosystem services Then how to measure it? ⬇ Top-down approaches work with limited data such as country of operation, turnover or purchases and combine them with national averages or models such as EXIOBASE and GLOBIO. They are appropriate for screening for instance.   ⬆ Bottom-up approaches can usually refine such screenings by aggregating assessments based on site-level data up to the corporate level. They include very different approaches with varying coverage and limitations: direct biodiversity state measurement, pressure-based modelling (e.g. through GLOBIO), and secondary layers & datasets on biodiversity state & significance (e.g. IBAT).   I am very proud of this chart and I hope it will help clarify a lot of discussions! I had started thinking about it a while ago and it converged with parallel thinking at CDC Biodiversité’s so we worked together to include it in its biodiversity footprint finance team’s latest report.   I added a wink at one of our first brainstorming sessions with Violette Pradère and Emma Godefroy on p.2 of the document: at first I saw the chart as an hourglass but quickly a more poetic vision emerged and we started calling it the “butterfly” chart as its top-down and bottom-up parts could be seen as the wings of a beautiful butterfly!   PS: I believe very few people actually think or say that #biodiversity should be measured with a single metric and I’m afraid raising this issue over & over again is distracting us from actually moving towards real actions and monitoring for biodiversity.

How does cultural awareness elevate your leadership impact? Cultural awareness has become a vital skill for effective leadership. As leaders, it's crucial to understand and appreciate the diverse cultures within our teams and organizations. In doing so, we can nurture an inclusive environment, ignite innovation, and propel business success. How can we develop cultural awareness and become more effective leaders in a diverse workplace? Here are some key points to consider: 1️⃣ Embrace curiosity. Cultivate a genuine interest in learning about different cultures, customs, and perspectives. Challenge your assumptions and expand your worldview. 2️⃣ Prioritize active listening. Actively listen to your team members, giving them space to share their experiences and viewpoints. Create a safe environment for open dialogue and encourage diverse voices to be heard. 3️⃣ Educate yourself. Invest in continuous learning about different cultures, beliefs, and practices. Attend workshops, engage in cross-cultural training, and read books/articles to deepen your understanding. 4️⃣ Be adaptable and flexible. Recognize that there are no one-size-fits-all approaches in leadership. Adapt your leadership style to accommodate the needs and preferences of diverse individuals and teams. 5️⃣ Foster cultural intelligence. Develop your cultural intelligence by valuing diversity, being aware of your own biases, and leveraging cultural differences as strengths to fuel creativity and innovation. Incorporating these strategies enables the creation of a workplace culture that celebrates diversity, promotes inclusion, and ultimately drives better business outcomes. Let's embrace the power of cultural awareness in leadership and become the transformative leaders our organizations need in today's global landscape. #Leadership #DiversityandInclusion #FutureOfWork #Humanresources ***************************** 👉 Follow me for more leadership and practical insights on building high-performing teams. 👉 Ring the 🔔 for notifications.