Prize Programs: Sustainability Market Leaders

Why were Sustainability Market Leaders initially convened and what do they do?

In 2005, the "Our Daily Bread, What Does It REALLY Cost?" Prize was launched to recognize the author(s) of a professional paper that presented a systemic analytical framework that measures the relationships of integrated environmental, social, governance, and financial factors (IESGF) impacting the true costs of a product – a loaf of bread.

Following the announcement of the 2006 Our Daily Bread Prize winner, an executive team was formed which included the Jurors and Finalists of the 2006 ODB Prize – the Our Daily Bread Leadership Team (ODBLT). The ODBLT's strategy is to support Sustainability Market Leaders (SMLs) – those market professionals responsible for raising sustainable benchmarks within their organizations and communicating true cost pricing into the marketplace so that true cost pricing is easily accessible, understandable, and actionable.

The SMLs from nine market sectors – marketing, media, research, academic, government, agriculture, sustainability advocates, business, and finance – are critical to the true cost pricing dialogue as they are the professionals who must expand the dialogue into their representative market sectors.

Key SML Roles and Responsibilities include:

Participation (live or remote) in Implementation Fora:

In Implementation Forum 1 (IF1), SMLs spearheaded the implementation of true cost pricing in the marketplace by framing key areas of inquiry into Calls for Papers, Action Plans, and Case Studies for the 2007-2008 Our Daily Bread Prizes. In preparation for IF1, SMLs received Sustainability Market Leader Workbooks to set a shared initial context that informed our work during the Forum.
SMLs will reconvene in Implementation Forum 2 (IF2) (planned for summer 2008) to review the findings from the Best Practices Survey and ODB Prizes and evaluate how the findings developed to date support their work and what work is still needed. In addition, SMLs could collectively evaluate the opportunity to frame a strategy to implement these practices within their organizations and market sectors as well as collectively communicate these findings into the marketplace.

Addressing Key Challenges

The ODBLT will qualify, introduce, and support SMLs to collaboratively share their strategies and experiences to integrate and manage their organizational risks by building on practices that support the vitality of all their stakeholders and their belonging to a place. Following up from IF1, the SML Online Forum allows SMLs to collaborate as stakeholders to address four primary challenges:

Make the case to their Senior Leaders to incorporate integrated environmental, social, governance, and financial Best Practices into their organization's policies and operations.
After receiving approval and the financial support from their organization, produce the Business Case recommending which among the integrated environmental, social, governance, and financial (IESGF) Best Practices can be adopted easily and cost effectively by prioritizing their environmental, social, governance, and financial policies and operational strengths. For reference, see William Blackburn's The Sustainability Handbook, Environmental Law Institute, 2007.
After obtaining Senior Leaders' sign off on the scope of work and budget, work with associates to implement IESGF Best Practices in their organization.
After SMLs facilitate their organization to become more transparent with reference to IESGF factors, SMLs work with associates to begin to market their goods and services in true cost pricing to their customers.

SMLs are further supported by the Sustainability Knowledge Base (SKB), an on-line Library that includes bibliographic references, media references, urns, and pdfs. Integrated environmental, social, governance, and financial (IESGF) Best Practices and metrics related to true cost pricing and true cost accounting are still difficult to find. This could be the case as they are both emergent disciplines and interdisciplinary by nature. Sustainable Ventures encourages users of the SKB to share references with other of Sustainable Ventures' web visitors. If you have a reference or organization you would like to bring to this community's attention, please send your reference to the Sustainability Knowledge Base's moderator, Sheila -at- SustainableVentures -dot- us, with many thanks from SKB users.