CSI on campus

CSI – crime scene investigation – is one of the most successful TV franchises [even re-runs on Thurs in US garner top 10 ratings and over 10m vierwers according to Nielsens, with a suite of derivatives like CSI Miami and production in several countries. CSI is

"a fast-paced drama about a team of forensic investigators trained to solve crimes by examining the evidence. They are on the case 24/7, scouring the scene, collecting the irrefutable evidence and finding the missing pieces that will solve the mystery".

In Brazil, Malaysia, Vermont, France, CSI may be found on your hotel TV, along with its indelible “duingh-duingh” jingle. TV.com reports that in 2007 nearly 84 million people watched CSI, making it the most watched show in the world, although the clipped dialogue and horizon-long stare of CSI Miami's "Horatio" is spectacularly vacuous acting...

In my work in the sustainability field, “CSI” has been used humourously and more seriously. In the dry humour of a research team, to “CSI company XYZ” was a phrase we coined at KLD in Boston when a seemingly innocuous bit of information is buried by the company, and the analyst would have to embark on some journey of investigative diligence. CSI has recently emerged as something of a favourite phrase for university inter-faculty and research centers, Corporate Sustainability Initiatives. The Aspen Institute’s Center for Business Education Sustainability Center Research Initiative has built a database of academic centers, identifying some activity in sustainability in over 600 centers across top colleges and universities across a variety of disciplines, including 111 MBA programs. Both Duke [Fuqua] and Berkley [Haas] recently posted for CSI EDs.

Through my teaching and seminars at grad-schools like Université de Genève, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, University of Melbourne, MIT and of course the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler Business School, I have had a fair exposure to where thinking and activity on sustainability is at professional schools. I never expected to enjoy the B-school teaching, but realized there was something there for me, and the challenge of being “on my game” in front of 30+ “show-me” attitude professionals in an academic context is still fun only AFTER over a bottle of red on the final day. I look forward to more in emerging markets like USM in Malaysia [we are moving forward with an RI Survey in SE Asia this year], UCT in South Africa and FGV in Brazil.

Via the students and faculty I have met [from sassy commodities traders to turtle egg counters to marketing marketers] and my work with Net Impact since 2003, I have witnessed the emergence of an academic awareness and activity on sustainability in major and emerging schools. Net Impact has had a marked impact on the evolution of curricula. Net Impact is a global network of over 10,000 MBAs and professionals dedicated to building a better world through their work, activities and leadership. The inaugural Net Impact Europe Conference hosted by the International Organizations MBA HEC Geneve in Geneva, Switzerland, during the weekend of June 12 – 14 allowed members to learn and interact with global leaders representing a full range of progressive business and social entrepreneurship practices. Themed as “Sustainable Prosperity: Taking on the Global Challenge” will bring over 500 professionals and business students together to explore topics in four channels [Innovation, Leadership, The Global Challenge, and Managing Investment & Measuring Results – I developed the faculty for this stream], the conference attracted business, international organization, and not-for-profit leaders and practitioners. The 19^th North American annual conference is hosted by Wharton November, 2008. It will be an opportunity to see where the Social Entrepreneurship effort has reached since 2003, and catch the R5 again.

In recruiting the first generation of executive directors to these roles, universities must attract attention that would have candidates – who will have been successful elsewhere - to consider leaving behind their business, teaching, investment, advocacy or consulting businesses for the right opportunity with a major institution that is committed to developing sustainability competencies for lasting impact.

“ What we have is a series of great opportunities disguised as insoluble problems.” John Hennessy, President of Stanford University.

The ED will need experience and roles having built initiatives, business or widgets from scratch with energy, enthusiasm and expertise - preferably in the complex multi-stakeholder environment of CSR. Knowing how political the tenured faculty intelligentsia of elite or well-endowed universities will be, the role suggests the critical requirement to “interpret” across academic/think-tank world to business and public agencies, and reverse. In my view, two mega-trends will change the dynamic in the sustainability theme over the next five years:

1. the drive for improved metrics and
2. the shifting power of the emerging markets and their sovereign wealth funds.

The work of any new university center focused on CSI will need to cover a range of micro and macro issues in conjunction with developments from the business, environment, and law schools, but these two most pressing mega-trends will systematically change the landscape for sustainability for all companies, especially American companies with foreign market exposure.

Perhaps the ED must be suited to life by committee, but I know I am least suited to the minutiae of academic and PhD life, nor situations with professional jealousy [as recent experience had reinforced]! In pushing over the boundaries of the field, leaders of CSI need to move across for-profit, not-for-profit, and academic boundaries. By developing the business case for sustainability, and investment in sustainability, on a global scale including emerging markets, offers a platform for successive in building a CSI from scratch. It is more than an academic year’s work!

I have enjoyed interacting with business and business schools, positioning my role across thinking-and-doing opportunities, and where as a white African, a South African having proven my abilities on the global stage here in the US and abroad. Even since discovering the phrase “meritocracy" as a 12-year-old at the Durban Amphitheatre one winter’s afternoon, I have sought to work in that dynamic, and after apartheid, even more so – where the colour of my skin is noticed less than my value-add to growing the business or the organization. I assume all are committed to celebrating the success as soon as possible! I am always looking for a team of talented peers, inside and outside the firm, to work with that make the hard days less hard, and the good days brilliant. A friend still talks glowingly about the positive collegial environment she experienced at Goldman Sachs in London, and I still remember my time at the cusp of this century at Nedcor Investment Bank in Johannesburg with our small motivated International Multi-Manager team as a thriving context. My recent campus visit at Duke helped illustrate the context, with seminars for The Fuqua School of Business, Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences and Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. The ask should help map some CSI thinking:

o Curricula: MBA programmes need to develop modules to integrate education on ESG factors in business strategy and investment decisions

o Case studies: opportunity for:

• New case studies covering ESG activity by companies and effect for investors
• Mapping current best practice in costing and integrating ESG factors
• Effect of investor initiatives

o Publishing: new academic writing and research on:

• Update investment effects and market performance
• Institutional investment decision-making?
• Voluntary vs compulsory regulation

o Endowments: how is your university integrating ESG factors into investment of endowment?

I especially enjoyed the seminar with Bob Clemen’s class at Fuqua, Decision Tools for Environmental Sustainability.

After 15 years professional working experience since law school, I have found that I work best in a stretching environment, leading teams in new or emerging businesses, or leading project teams in established businesses into new directions. For example, in an intellectual and organizational vacuum at a global advocacy initiative I spotted the weakness in building meaningful and material relationships, so I designed, developed, tested, and delivered a new model for signatory interaction, EM Call. The EM Call became something professional and inclusive demonstrating a listening mode, and became anticipated the third Thursday of every month. Investment colleagues on 3 continents made personal, positive comments about this regular and valuable new component. Unfortunately, it changed when I left, and I assume it is now undone.

As professional schools, the CSI Varsity must graduate students that recruiters find meet their needs – the WSJ ranking of B-schools is correctly weighted to include corporate recruiters. Some skills are missing from corporate sustainability professionals today, even as sustainability reaches the C-suite [see Chief Sustainability Officers, New York Times 7/3/2007]. In general, the industry needs to establish standards and manage them through professional bodies and certification, in line with comments from a forthcoming article I co-wrote for Journal of Corporate Citizenship. The discipline and skill of articulating how the industry measures itself and its professionals will lead to a fundamental step-up in our work, and its value [see also work by ABC at Duke]. New business models and even formats of institutions in a globalized, Web 2.0 world will also challenge current thinking of sustainability – who has the answers, and where we should be heading? I hope the rich intellectual challenge in the complexities of sustainability will see sustainability professionals leading the way in thinking, experimenting, and scaling new models of business leadership. Only be integrating disciplines will a CSI successfully achieve this.

The CSI will live or die based on the size of their budgets – like any new R&D or product roll-out, a big budget released early for multi-year funding is critical. This was one of the Aspen Institute 2008 findings as they surveyed CSI at leading institutions like IMD, Berkley and using an expansive search of top colleges and universities across a variety of disciplines, adding nearly 400 additional centers to the 111 in the BeyondGreyPinstripes database. Quality of funding will differentiate the CSI quality in 5 years. Respondents described [p.6]

…secure funding allows a center to operate strategically rather than opportunistically; that it gives faculty breathing room to attend to organizational development (otherwise a risk to long-term research productivity); and serves as an “anchor tenant,” helping to create an environment in which other stakeholders feel secure investing time and resources in the center. The amount and term of the funding appears to be more important than the source or intended use (chair, program gift, research support, etc…[I]t’s much easier for a potential sponsor to be inspired by a blank slate than a re-organization or turnaround opportunity; it’s too hard to shoehorn an existing program agenda, image and brand into the interests of a prospective donor; etc. In sum, you’re only born once... In contrast, centers that pursue an opportunistic model in hopes that a focus and funding source will emerge, are much more likely to stay in hand-to-mouth mode indefinitely.

The Aspen Institute Center for Business Education Sustainability Center Research Initiative survey out in Mar. 2008 itself recognized funding from the Applied Sustainability Center at the Sam Walton Business School, University of Arkansas. Fundraising or attracting assets has always been some part of my roles, as a pensions officer or investment banker pitching the unique selling proposition of an investment approach, or attracting co-funding for work at The John Templeton Foundation leveraging seed-capital, or at the UN pitching government agencies for cash or stakeholders for services in kind enabling events to be planned and succeed with just a small direct funding from the project budget. Asset gathering for ED’s will be as crucial as the early years of student selection.

In the competitive context for students and professorial talent, the industry seems at a similar stage to the money management industry which is struggling for experienced money managers and analysts, beyond the social science and pol.-sci. majors that formed the issues base. Now investors need to be front and centre. The paper makes its final pitch for some overarching organization. But I suggest there are lessons to be learned about surrendering agendas and facsimiles of the real thing when cooperation and collaboration is floated. Institutions not joining or leaving initiatives point to the case for caution. Hyper-competitive B-schools will inch forward carefully with their CSI, and do well to stay away from some ossified organizations that struggle in a Facebook-ed world. New thinking deserves new models of collaboration.