5.03.2012

Gem of the day

The Economist is no place to look for insights that put sustainability in the same league as profit. Here's columnist Schumpeter's latest recommendation to the world's board (bored) rooms:

"Companies need to keep hammering away at the simplicity mantra. Gareth Penny, a former boss of De Beers, a diamond company, says that: 'The role of a CEO is to simplify the complexity and stick to a few themes.'”

Sorry boys, but figuring out how to deal with the growing pressures of climate change, degradation of the natural environment, human rights and everything else that fits into the sustainability big tent ain't simple.

Then again, that kind of blind mantra is no surprise coming from De Beers' Penny, who once stated under the title 'Sustainability' in a De Beers CSR report this rather simple interpretation:

"Following a profitable 2008, in 2009 De Beers will focus on running a sustainable business at a lower level of sales."

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