Sustainable Value Creation Assignment
Journal Entry:
- Take some time to watch the following three provocation pieces:
- Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan: Watch Video 1 [4:07 min] | Watch Video 2 [1:25 min]
- Annie Leonard – The Story of Stuff [21:24 min].
- Optional Activity: There are numerous videos on The Story of Stuff Project website which you may find of interest.
- After reading “Capitalism at the Crossroads: Next Generation Business Strategies for a Post Crisis World” by Stuart L. Hart Chapters 1 and 2 of Hart (2010), reflect on the positions in each of the videos. Respond to several of the following prompts in your reflection. In addition to delving to understand your own reaction to these videos, your journal entry should also draw on some concepts that you have encountered in the course texts:
- What essential claims are being made by each organization? What is your own view of the validity of these claims? Why do you think you have this view?
- What basic assumptions do those claims depend upon? How are these consistent with or different than your own assumptions?
- What basic values can you infer? Are these similar to or different from your own values? In what ways?
- What tensions or contradictions exist in the underlying assumptions in each of these provocations? What are the tensions or the contradictions in the way that you think about sustainability?
How might we seek integration (vs. tradeoffs) across those tensions in the two provocations? Under what assumptions or values might they be seen as creative tensions versus contradictions (i.e. generate insights and innovative responses rather than negative reactions)? How might you shift your own assumptions in order to generate creative tensions rather than contradictions?