Creating Shared Value Blog

This post originally appeared on The Guardian's Sustainable Business Blog.

As we learn more about shared value and its implications for different sectors, a frequently asked question is around what it means for investors. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Michael Porter and Mark Kramer argue that shared value will "drive the next wave of innovation and productivity growth in the global economy." Put this way, it is clear that an understanding of one of the key drivers of growth is of utmost importance to investors.

This post originally appeared on The Guardian's Sustainable Business Blog.

The most notable outcome of Rio+20 seems to have been a rash of disappointed and dispirited headlines: "Rio+20 will be remembered as the unhappy environmental summit", wrote Bradley Brooks for the Associated Press. "Rio+20 = Almost Zero," complained Claude Smadja for the Business Standard. Broader commentary was no less scalding. CARE characterised the meeting as "nothing more than a political charade".

I’ve been following the unfolding political events in Côte d’Ivoire with great interest – a potentially combustible situation in which two men claim to have won the recent presidential election (recent NYT news here). My interest stems from both personal (I used to live in West Africa) and professional (we’ve been working with a client in the West Africa cocoa sector for the past two years) angles.