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Case Studies | Tuesday November 4, 2014

Global Network Initiative: Protecting Human Rights in the Digital Age

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The Challenge

The rapid growth in global internet and telecommunications services has resulted in significant gains in our ability to communicate freely. However, this growth has been accompanied by government efforts to restrict user access to content, acquire personal information, and interfere with private communications.

For many years, information and communications technology (ICT) companies were caught between government requirements and the users’ expectations and rights—lacking international standards to apply when governments made demands that might result in human rights infringements. To determine best practices and create these standards, BSR partnered with the Center for Democracy and Technology in 2006 to design and facilitate a multistakeholder process to fill this void.

Our Strategy

BSR worked with the group to write the foundational documents—principles, implementation guidelines, and a governance charter—that shaped the work of the Global Network Initiative (GNI), which launched in 2008 as the first group of its kind that included representatives from ICT companies, civil society groups, investors, and academics.

BSR served as the co-facilitator during this process, helping with negotiation and conflict resolution to generate consensus during debates. We also undertook the work of the GNI until it became its own legal entity in 2010. Following this, BSR wrote a public report for GNI on “Protecting Human Rights in the Digital Age,” outlining the main freedom of expression and privacy risks at different layers of the ICT value chain.

Since 2010, the GNI has had a full-time secretariat in place, and BSR no longer facilitates the organization—which reflects BSR’s occasional role as an incubator of innovative, collaborative efforts that are then implemented by others. Today, the GNI focuses on advancing its principles, recruiting new companies, sharing best practices, engaging in policy debates, and implementing its accountability mechanism.

Our Impact

The sustained success of the GNI is an indication of BSR’s own story of impact.

Partly as a result of this work, the GNI’s five member companies, which together serve more than 2 billion users, have implemented new global standards on freedom of expression and privacy. In 2013, nine global telecommunications companies launched a set of principles focused on free expression and privacy.

The GNI’s work also helped build understanding among experts from the ICT industry and from the field of human rights—two groups that previously did not regularly work together. This has helped build a growing community of experts in ICT and human rights—a significant development given the increasing importance of technology in our pursuit of human rights today.

While exact cause and effect is difficult to pinpoint, ICT companies’ increased transparency about their relationships with law-enforcement, and companies’ reformed approaches to surveillance and data collection, are among the GNI’s recent successes.

Lessons learned

The multistakeholder approach and emphasis on accountability standards has enhanced the credibility of the GNI among human rights organizations, and it is unlikely that the depth of collaboration between companies and human rights organizations would have happened without it.

However, the GNI has faced challenges expanding its corporate membership base, which has grown from three to five major internet companies. That said, because of the GNI’s open standards and multistakeholder approach, other companies that have not joined the GNI have deemed the GNI’s founding documents highly credible, and have adopted key features of the underlying principles.

Case Studies | Tuesday November 4, 2014

Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition: 10 Years of Impact in the Electronics Supply Chain

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The Challenge

The rapid growth of the information and communications technology (ICT) industry requires an expansive manufacturing supply chain that needs to address a range of labor, health, safety, and environmental challenges, including excessive working hours, growing carbon emissions, and inadequate living conditions for workers.

In 2004, it became clear that efforts to address these challenges would be more powerful if different players across the ICT value chain—brands, assemblers, and component manufacturers—formed one collaborative initiative. They enlisted BSR’s help.

Our Strategy

In 2004, a small group of ICT companies came to BSR with a simple request: Help us establish and grow an organization to implement the new Electronics Industry Code of Conduct through shared tools, collaborative approaches, and innovative methods. That same year, at the annual BSR Conference, the group officially launched the Electronic Industry Code Compliance, which in 2008 became the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC).

As a neutral facilitator, BSR helped the group establish sustainable approaches to governance, management, and membership growth. This included the launch of the EICC as an independent legal entity in 2008, and the recruitment of full-time secretariat staff in 2013.

As an expert on supply chain responsibility, we helped develop approaches to some of the industry’s most intractable problems, including conflict minerals, excessive working hours, water quality, and carbon emissions.

To ensure that this work was meaningful to business globally, we worked with companies and suppliers in all regions, and invited companies at all layers of the ICT supply chain to participate.

Our Impact

Now that the EICC has a full-time secretariat, BSR no longer facilitates the group. However, we do regularly participate in EICC events, and maintain a dialogue on best practices in supply chain management.

The EICC grew from seven companies at its launch to almost 100 companies by its 10th anniversary in 2014—which means the EICC now influences responsible business practices at companies representing more than US$2.6 trillion in revenues.

The most powerful way the EICC influences companies is through its code, which sets out minimum requirements on ethics, labor, health, safety, and the environment. As of the end of 2012, 100 percent of EICC member companies were applying the code at their suppliers’ facilities, and more than 80 percent were using EICC tools to conduct supplier risk assessments.

Additionally, the EICC ensures that lessons are shared across its membership by reviewing industry audit results and designing collaborative methods to address the most significant findings. This has allowed the group to create industrywide approaches to issues like conflict minerals, through the EICC’s Conflict-Free Sourcing Initiative, and water quality in China, by working with China’s leading environmental organization, the Institute for Public and Environmental Affairs.

Lessons learned

Bringing different parts of an entire industry’s supply chain together into one organization presents both opportunities and challenges.

On issues such as conflict minerals, environmental management, carbon emissions, working hours, and student workers, the industry has been able to develop solutions much more rapidly and effectively.

However, different parts of the ICT supply chain can have competing interests, and this creates challenges in decision-making, governance, and prioritization. Companies continue to seek evidence of how participation in the EICC will deliver measurable business benefits, and different membership tracks have allowed companies to make progress at different speeds.

At the same time, there are limitations even for an industrywide group such as this, due to core business factors and challenges associated with the ICT industry, such as pressures on price, quality, and delivery timelines, or the lack of government enforcement of legal requirements. Nevertheless, collaborative approaches have significantly increased the leverage of individual companies in the face of these challenges.

Case Studies | Tuesday November 4, 2014

Sanofi: Using Materiality to Build a Strong, Focused CSR Strategy

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The Challenge

Since 2010, Sanofi has used the materiality principle to ensure that its CSR strategy addressed the issues of greatest importance to both business success and stakeholders. Sanofi’s first materiality analysis in 2010 resulted in 12 priorities for action, and while Sanofi has continuously revised and improved the process since then, the same 12 CSR priorities have remained.

In 2013, Sanofi decided that after three years, it was the right time to review its materiality priorities. The company enlisted BSR’s help to explore whether these 12 issues had shifted in relative importance, whether there were additional issues to consider, and how best to focus the company’s resources.

Our Strategy

Sanofi and BSR partnered to rank, map, and analyze a list of 50 potential issues, ranging from pricing of drugs, to responsible marketing practices, to emissions, to water, to talent development.

BSR’s materiality methodology has evolved since its creation in 2006, and in this case our methodology included a qualitative and quantitative dimension—engaging more than 100 internal and external stakeholders across Sanofi’s nine categories of stakeholders and across all major geographies through desktop research, phone interviews, in-person interviews, and online surveys. We also stretched our methodology to incorporate questions that helped us understand and highlight levels of management, actionable items, risks and opportunities, and upcoming trends.

This new approach to materiality gave Sanofi a deeper understanding of the company’s priority issues, which allowed the company to narrow the list down to six CSR priorities that are closely linked to its core business. Some items were kept, such as access to healthcare and patient safety, while the scope of other issues, such as business ethics, was clarified.

On environmental issues, stakeholders were divided. One stakeholder with a strong knowledge of the pharmaceutical sector described these issues as “less important, as they are not specific to the pharmaceutical industry.” While this overarching comment was shared by several stakeholders, many clearly identified “pharmaceuticals in the environment” as a growing risk, and because of BSR’s robust methodology, Sanofi felt confident in including this issue in its final list.

Our Impact

Materiality is used to inform strategy, so the immediate impacts are in changes to the company’s CSR approach. This more focused list of issues is now helping the company sharpen its strategy, rebalance the allocation of resources and attention dedicated to advancing each issue, and work toward the objective of amplifying the company’s impact in the coming years.

Lessons learned

This project confirmed two key concepts of materiality.

First, a materiality process that involves robust methodology and a thorough data and input collection process can do more than identify priorities. It can provide a baseline assessment of risks and opportunities, and it can address management performance and even identify rising trends.

Second, materiality is more than the sum of its parts. It can provide an opportunity for stakeholders to influence a large company, for a company to continue existing dialogues or start new ones with stakeholders, for corporate teams to engage with executives, and for the company to bring focus and create more value for the business and its stakeholders.

Case Studies | Monday August 25, 2014

Procurement of Display Units as an Opportunity for Improved Sustainability in Stores

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The Challenge

Best Buy has more than 1,000 stores in the United States, all of which have many in-store displays. In 2012, the company partnered with the Center for Sustainable Procurement (CSP) to explore ways that it could improve its procurement process for displays and define the criteria for making them more sustainable in the future.

The display lifecycle intersects a range of functions at Best Buy, from design and vendor management to store operations and disposal, making it a useful test case. Additionally, this work was well-aligned with the company’s commitment to reduce its stores’ environmental impacts and with earlier efforts to ensure that all Best Buy displays comply with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) requirements to reduce toxic emissions from composite wood products.

From the beginning, Best Buy expected that supplier engagement would be essential to support the development of more sustainable displays, whether through validating and implementing design choices or helping to identify options for preferable components at competitive prices. Internal supporters for this work included the procurement lead responsible for sustainability and the sourcing manager responsible for construction and displays, as well as senior leadership responsible for sustainability and corporate responsibility across the company.

CSP identified several challenges, including educating both staff and vendors about the desired sustainability improvements, unclear incentives for change, unknown cost implications of changing display components, and limited information about the sustainability, availability, and durability of alternative components.

Our Strategy

CSP interviewed key internal stakeholders and decision-makers related to display procurement and management and researched the materials used in displays to understand the options for environmentally preferable alternatives.

Through this analysis, CSP identified a set of opportunities across the lifecycle of displays, starting with design, vendor selection, manufacturing, and deployment and carrying through to in-store use and display end of life. CSP then recommended that Best Buy gather information from select suppliers and outside experts about environmental opportunities and areas where suppliers are considering the environmental impacts of display materials. These discussions would be designed to identify current activities and to clarify specific opportunities for short-term actions to improve the procurement process or displays themselves.

CSP also recommended that Best Buy investigate targets or preferences for more sustainable materials, principally focused on availability and cost, while also documenting other sustainability benefits or concerns. One example of implementation might be setting specific component goals, such as making sure that at least 75 percent of all the wood and wood composite components used in its displays is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). Another example could be working with existing suppliers on methods to meet sustainability targets and including these targets in procurement criteria with new suppliers through the request for proposals (RFP) process. Best Buy could also establish a time line for making these shifts in display procurement.

Our Impact

This research led Best Buy to engage directly with its key suppliers of metal and wood-based displays to execute the recommendations. In discussions with them, the company found that several suppliers were already addressing potential improvements, including:

• Light-weighting of display components (design enhancements to reduce materials while retaining structural integrity)
• Use of recycled content
• End-of-life recovery of electronic components in displays
• Use of environmentally preferable materials and techniques in transport packaging

By engaging directly with suppliers, Best Buy learned about product improvement opportunities and began realigning its goals to account for them.

However, it was unclear whether it was feasible to make immediate changes to display materials or disposal processes. While some options or activities, such as light-weighting and improved packaging, help reduce costs and improve environmental impacts, other environmentally preferable options or activities, such as using FSC-certified wood or reusing components, are less immediately viable based on their cost. CSP recommended that Best Buy continue to explore these options because of their environmental benefits and their potential for positive business impacts.

Lessons Learned

Although this study did not uncover immediate opportunities for changes to displays, Best Buy now includes questions about relevant environmental issues in its display procurement process, which has resulted in deeper discussions with suppliers about their activities and possible, related sustainability opportunities. These discussions also have enabled Best Buy to emphasize to its suppliers how much the company values environmental sustainability, particularly in relation to the products it purchases.

The value of integrating environmental issues into supplier engagement for displays suggests that this approach could be applied in other areas at Best Buy. By regularly engaging with suppliers on specific sustainability opportunities, such as the use of FSC-certified materials, as well as posing open-ended questions about other opportunities for social and environmental improvements, Best Buy can identify new opportunities and act on them in the future.

Case Studies | Monday August 25, 2014

Improving the Lifecycle Energy Impacts of Notebook Computers in the Production Phase

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The Challenge

Dell wanted to improve the lifecycle sustainability impacts of its notebook computers. Through its own work gathering lifecycle data from suppliers, as well as involvement in collaborative initiatives, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s PAIA (Product Attribute to Impact Algorithm) and The Sustainability Consortium, Dell had already identified the hot spots and other critical impacts that must be addressed to substantially improve the sustainability of notebooks.

Viewed through the lens of the product, these impacts constitute two types of sustainability attributes:

• Physical attributes: Material content, energy use (efficiency), and recyclability
• Embedded attributes represented by the sum total of production impacts (energy use, water use, waste production, social and labor effects, etc.) from extraction to component manufacture, assembly, and transport

Many of these impacts are related to the practices of suppliers, recycling partners, and transport and logistics providers. This is particularly true in Dell’s case, as all manufacturing and some elements of design and service are contracted out to a few original design manufacturers (ODMs). With respect to energy and emissions, for example, Dell has conducted lifecycle assessment (LCA) studies that suggest that half of the lifecycle energy use and related emissions for a typical notebook computer are found in the supply chain (extraction, manufacture, and transport), with the other half represented by product use.

While important progress is being made in these areas of supply chain performance, the sustainability team at Dell saw an opportunity to make its supply chain practices even more sustainable—and hence improve its notebooks’ overall sustainability profile—by working with the Center for Sustainable Procurement (CSP) to find new ways to engage and support ODMs.

The key decision-makers were Dell’s marketing and product development division, commodity team, supplier management division, operations, and its ODMs.

Our Strategy

To define the focus and scope of this case study, Dell and CSP first considered the following questions:

• What are Dell’s business and sustainability priorities for notebook computers?
• Where are we likely to find opportunities to improve sustainability performance that also create business benefits for our suppliers and partners?
• In what areas are suppliers most likely to have at least some of the capacity, data, and infrastructure needed to drive improvement in a reasonable time frame?

Dell and CSP agreed that, to be successful, any proposed improvements would need to be cost effective and scalable, produce real sustainability improvements, and maintain or improve quality—all without causing any delays in production. To achieve these objectives, Dell assembled an internal, cross-functional team that brought together key players in the overall product development process, especially the commodity purchasing teams responsible for determining the desired product specifications and the supplier management teams whose job it is to work with supplier partners to make sure that Dell product specifications and production standards are being met. CSP then engaged this internal team to ensure that it fully understood and was aligned with Dell’s broader sustainability goals, and specifically, to determine how they can approach and partner with ODMs to improve the lifecycle energy impacts of notebook computers in the production phase.

Our Impact

While Dell already incorporates environmental standards into product specifications and has robust processes in place to monitor and improve suppliers’ operating practices, the two have not historically been linked. Improving the total lifecycle sustainability performance of notebooks required Dell to connect the dots between the commodity purchasing teams and those who directly manage key suppliers. Through these internal engagements, the company has aligned these teams to support its sustainability goals.

These internal engagements also led to a pilot project with an ODM partner to better understand the supplier’s energy usage with the ultimate goal of understanding how the supplier can reduce its energy use and improve notebooks’ overall lifecycle impacts. The pilot’s goal is to collect available baseline energy data from ODMs, identify opportunities for energy reductions at the facilities level, provide guidance to the ODM to realize improvements, and then measure the phase’s energy use after the project has been executed.

The information gathered and lessons learned through this pilot project will ultimately help Dell to better manage its supplier relationships and drive decision-making around procurement that improve embedded energy in this complex product category.

Lessons Learned

The power of connecting internal teams that historically have not been linked was a key lesson learned. In the case of Dell, the commodity purchasing and supply chain management teams benefited greatly from first aligning on broad sustainability objectives. They then developed category strategies for notebook computers that incorporated specific sustainability attributes as a way to create business value for the company.

Stronger internal alignment also led to a more cohesive supplier engagement strategy, particularly with Dell’s long-term suppliers with whom the company must partner to realize sustainability gains, specifically as they relate to improving the lifecycle sustainability impacts of its notebook computers.

Case Studies | Monday August 25, 2014

Purchasing Higher Quality Paint to Save Cost and Make the Case for Sustainability

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The Challenge

Of the 5,200 buildings Telenor Real Estate maintains in Norway, most are small buildings made to house technical equipment. For this reason, most of them are situated on islands, along coastlines, on mountaintops, and in other areas with harsh weather. Most, if not all, of the buildings are built out of wood, the country’s most common building material. Due to the harsh weather and the building’s materials, they must be repainted quite often, about every five years. Repainting them involves several factors that contribute to the overall cost: paint, labor hours, and travel.

Our Strategy

Initially, Telenor focused on reducing the cost of painting all of their buildings. They analyzed these costs and found that the biggest potential for impact was with travel and labor costs. The cost of paint was relatively low, so by cutting travel and labor, they could have the most significant effect on total cost. By increasing the intervals between paintings, they could reduce the number of times the painters would have to travel to the buildings, reduce the number of suppliers, and assign each supplier more buildings to manage.

Telenor noticed that on some buildings the paint lasted longer and discovered that those buildings had higher quality paint. The company then concluded that, by using the highest quality paint on the market, they could increase the intervals between paintings from approximately five years to about seven years. While higher quality paint would be more expensive up-front, the other savings would outweigh these initial expenses.

Telenor put out a competitive bid to several painting companies, specifying the paint to be used and designating more buildings per supplier. Over time, the company has reduced its suppliers to two.

Our Impact

The savings from reducing the number of times the painters had to travel to the buildings amounted to a 40 percent cost savings. Additionally, by repainting less often, the suppliers used less paint. Since this change, Telenor has also begun requiring their building maintenance company to use higher quality paint.

Telenor’s decision wasn’t driven by environmental consciousness, but since finding that sustainability can offer monetary advantages, the company is beginning to incorporate this thinking into its other procurement activities and decisions.

Lessons Learned

Telenor found that the best way to reduce costs was to choose the more sustainable option, showing that sustainability and lower costs aren’t mutually exclusive. Since the real estate team found that more sustainable choices offer business opportunities, it will be able to make the case for sustainability more easily in the future.

Additionally, having fewer suppliers allows Telenor to work more closely with them and build stronger relationships, which in turn helps the company and suppliers collaborate to tackle more sustainability challenges. Telenor was also able to introduce their suppliers to a more sustainable way of operating. Because of this case study, Telenor’s suppliers have become more environmentally conscious.

Case Studies | Friday July 26, 2013

Vodafone: Respecting Human Rights in the Digital World

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The Challenge

The information and communications technology (ICT) industry faces numerous human rights challenges and opportunities at a time when international consensus has emerged around the corporate responsibility to respect human rights. These human rights "hot spots" range from upholding labor rights in the ICT supply chain to promoting freedom of expression and protecting privacy among consumers online.

The Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights—which establish clarity on government's duty to protect and business' responsibility to respect human rights—indicate that businesses should act with due diligence to avoid infringing on human rights and address actual or potential adverse impacts on human rights.

Vodafone enlisted BSR to help apply the key elements of the Guiding Principles to the company's human rights strategy and operations.

Our Strategy

BSR led a three-part process to align Vodafone’s strategy with the Guiding Principles:

• Created a human rights map: To identify Vodafone’s human rights risks and opportunities, we used the International Bill of Human Rights as a baseline (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,  and International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights).
• Identified hot spots: Next, through tagging of risks and opportunities, BSR singled out human rights hot spots of significance for Vodafone.
• Analyzed opportunities to improve company practices: Finally, we reviewed the company’s policies and processes on identified human rights hot spots, compared them to the requirements of the Guiding Principles, offered examples from other companies, and made recommendations on how the company could address those issues.

BSR’s analysis identified the categories of human rights most relevant to Vodafone’s business: labor rights; civil and political rights; rights of the child; economic, social, and cultural rights; land and property acquisition; and the environment.

Our Impact

Based on our analysis, Vodafone has:

• Reinforced the inclusion of human rights in the Vodafone Code of Conduct.
• Strengthened its due diligence process for entering new markets (either unilaterally or through partnerships with other operators).
• In its reporting, brought together details of its policies and programs relating to identified human rights hotspots to more closely align to the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

Our Lessons Learned

Helping Vodafone review its human rights strategy demonstrated why it is important for companies to look at these issues in a holistic and collaborative way:

• By examining not only risks but opportunities to advance human rights, it is easier to gain support from senior management and improve performance as a whole.
• It is important to develop a strategy that is comprehensive enough to be applied across country operations but that is flexible enough to adapt to local needs.
• The telecommunications industry lacks a relevant industry standard for reporting on human rights, underscoring the need for companies to work with their peers to define relevant indicators to report performance on human rights challenges to stakeholders.

Case Studies | Friday May 3, 2013

Telefónica: Assessing Human Rights Risks and Opportunities

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The Challenge

In today’s networked world, the information and communications technology (ICT) sector is facing increased scrutiny for its role in enabling and inhibiting human rights—including issues as diverse as privacy rights; labor standards in product manufacturing; resource extraction in conflict zones; and contributing to respect for rights such as freedom of expression, health, and education.

The Spanish telecommunications company Telefónica, which operates in 16 markets in Europe and Latin America, has an interest in applying the same level of human rights protections in all of its diverse regions.

Telefónica engaged BSR to assess its human rights impacts, risks, and opportunities in each of its operating regions—marking what may be the first time a company in the ICT industry has done this.

Our Strategy

BSR worked with Telefónica to build an organizationwide human rights strategy grounded in a firm understanding of the company’s risks and opportunities to enhance human rights and gain business value through market differentiation and social innovation. We started by conducting a corporate- and country-level human rights impact assessment (HRIA) that included three steps:

1. Internal assessment: We reviewed the company’s corporate policies and procedures and developed a global tool to measure Telefónica’s human rights risks and opportunities across 16 markets.
2. Local assessment: Next, Telefónica’s country-level markets completed an HRIA to uncover risks and opportunities. This was done by examining the company’s management systems and activities, addressing regional risks and opportunities, examining its history of performance on human rights issues, and evaluating local stakeholders’ perceptions about the company’s impacts.
3. Analysis and strategy plan: Based on these assessments, BSR provided practical recommendations to help the company address stakeholder expectations, strengthen management systems where needed, and improve due diligence on human rights at the corporate and country levels.

Our Impact

Telefónica’s new human rights plan has helped the company align decision-makers across all markets as well as at the corporate level. Through the plan, the company also has developed a plan for corporate headquarters and country-level operations to improve due diligence, risk mitigation, and management of opportunities.

Lessons Learned

Working with Telefónica on its human rights strategy demonstrated why it is important for companies to look at human rights in a holistic way:

• By examining not only risks but opportunities to advance human rights, it is easier to gain support from senior management and improve performance as a whole.
• It is important to educate in-country staff on human rights issues so they can help identify and address local challenges. It is also important to develop a strategy that is comprehensive enough to be applied across country operations, but that is flexible enough to adapt to local needs.
• In an HRIA, stakeholder engagement helps ensure that decision-makers understand the local context and use that knowledge to assess the effects of existing management systems and initiatives.

Case Studies | Monday November 5, 2012

Western Union Summit: Addressing Education Needs and Creating New Business Opportunities

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The Challenge

Education has the power to improve both individual and community well-being, helping regions become more competitive economically, reduce poverty, and support democratic activities. Yet even though the UN has identified universal primary education as one of the eight Millennium Development Goals, approximately 61 million school-age children are not enrolled. An additional 71 million are not enrolled in secondary school.

Western Union has 510,000 agent locations in 200 countries and territories, reaching tens of millions of customers worldwide. Many are un-/under-banked and live in the communities where education is a particular challenge. Western Union asked BSR to help design and facilitate a process that would allow the company to engage with external experts to identify solutions for educational needs that also could potentially grow its business.

Our Strategy

To gain an understanding of the education challenges and identify opportunities for Western Union to fill the gap through its products, services, and global reach, BSR facilitated a strategy summit that gathered external education experts and key Western Union leaders.

Based on our original research and drawing on BSR’s deep experience in stakeholder engagement, we identified external thought leaders and designed a workshop that allowed for open dialogue, rapid knowledge sharing, innovative brainstorming, and the prioritization of new business ideas that could be translated into action immediately after the workshop.

The workshop brought together 10 Western Union senior executives, who had direct leadership of key business lines or regions, with nine external stakeholders from global NGOs, development organizations, and other companies. The preparation and structure allowed for business representatives to learn from the external participants about education challenges, and for the external representatives to share their expertise with Western Union, a company that remains positioned to make a difference.

This innovative format allowed Western Union to identify and evaluate new business ideas, and the participation of senior executives ensured that the new ideas could be implemented. The format also helped Western Union engage external thought leaders in a strategic way—a rare example of a company bringing in issue experts as part of product development.

Our Impact

The summit generated 20 new product and services ideas—including direct payment of teachers, restricted-use money transfers for school fees, and adult education via new mobile products. The company began to partner with a third-party organization to test its first priority concept in key markets less than five months after the workshop. Just 10 months after the summit, Western Union shifted its cause marketing focus toward this issue. In September 2012, Western Union’s “Education for Better” program was announced on the floor of the United Nations.

The event also confirmed the value of this type of engagement for Western Union. It improved the company’s reputation among stakeholders who were impressed with the company’s commitment and transparency. And, by generating tangible new business ideas, the process also demonstrated the business benefits of this approach to senior company leaders.

As Thor Hauge, Vice President, Business Development, Western Union Ventures put it, “I’ve been to many brainstorming sessions that have lasted weeks. We accomplished more in eight hours than any of those sessions.”

Western Union is now planning a second event of this kind to explore this model for future product development.

Lessons Learned

Too often, stakeholder engagement focuses solely on gathering feedback. But this innovative model—which included clear objectives for tangible outcomes and involvement of senior leaders from key geographies and business units—allowed Western Union to co-create solutions with stakeholders. Additionally, by starting with a social need, the company was able to identify new opportunities that had not surfaced through traditional models of product development.

The risks Western Union takes in being more transparent, and engaging with external experts, pay off with opportunities for creating business value and directly addressing social and environmental needs globally.

Case Studies | Monday October 22, 2012

CTIA: Outlining How Wireless Technology Drives Sustainability

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The Challenge

With more than 6 billion mobile phone subscriptions around the world, and more than 100 million (and rapidly growing) machine-to-machine communications, wireless technology is ubiquitous, convenient, and increasingly integrated into our daily lives. Nonetheless, it is not clear how wireless technology has been deployed to enable solutions to longstanding environmental and social problems.

Our Strategy

After consulting with more than 20 wireless industry experts and analyzing data from a wide range of sources, we developed two substantive reports focused on the wireless impacts on the environment and society. In “Wireless and the Environment,” we reviewed the role wireless can play in reducing the environmental footprint of the transportation, utilities, agriculture, and public services sectors. “Socioeconomic Impacts of Wireless Technology” explored the development of wireless technology in society through four lenses: health care, finance, education, and community empowerment.

Both reports noted the growing potential for innovative wireless solutions to improve the environment and societies around the world, such as “smart” wireless traffic-control devices that could reduce emissions by 20 percent, or wireless health care initiatives that dramatically improve access to health care information and could save up to US$2.1 billion annually in the United States alone.

At the same time, the reports call attention to ongoing challenges resulting from the manufacture and use of wireless technology, including the environmental costs of the manufacturing and disposal of products, as well as concerns about privacy, freedom of expression, and supply chain labor rights.

Our Impact

Through discussions among professionals in various fields and presentations of these reports at industry forums, our work has demonstrated some of the possibilities for wireless technology to address human and environmental needs. It has also encouraged a deeper debate about the role of wireless technology in a sustainable society, and it called attention to the need for solutions to ongoing environmental and human rights challenges associated with the production and use of wireless technology.

Lessons Learned

This project highlighted three lessons about the use of technology to support progress in sustainability:

1. Since wireless technology can monitor data at any time and any place, important information can be communicated instantly, enabling more sophisticated resource allocation and providing data-driven evidence to encourage behavior change and operational efficiencies.
2. Collaboration leads to innovation. Combining experts in urban planning with wireless-application developers, for example, can lead to new ideas about using wireless technology to manage and improve traffic flow.
3. New solutions can result in new sustainability risks. Whether it’s protecting the privacy of wirelessly available personal health data or managing the environmental impact of distributed microsensors, the industry should identify and address emerging concerns to ensure that opportunities are not derailed by concerns about impacts.