Novartis

The World Environment Center

What:
In the initial stages of linking innovation to sustainability, companies start by viewing compliance as opportunity, making their value chains more sustainable, and designing more sustainable products and services. The next step for them is to develop new business models and even to create platforms that enable completely new business ecosystems and industries. One of the most interesting concepts in this respect being explored by companies is called SOCIAL INNOVATION – seeking innovative answers or business models to address social problems of relevance to business such as poverty or health, sometimes with a strong link to environmental degradation. The good news for business is that this process is inherent with what business is best at: competing for being smarter, faster, and greater while transforming to the new requirements of a changing world.

The objectives of this Roundtable will include:

• Understanding sustainability as the driver for innovation and business success.
• Building additional competencies on social innovation and how to incorporate the concept into own company’s business model.
• Sharing learning from new practices/approaches and discussing opportunities for cooperation and activating partnerships with business, government, academia, NGO’s on sustainable development and corporate social innovation.

See agenda and register here