April 6, 2022
As BSR celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, we see opportunities to achieve our mission like never before, in a world that is facing many urgent challenges.
In this context, we have updated our strategy over the past year. Our new 2025 strategy builds on three decades of experience and achievement and will enable us to maximize impact and accelerate progress toward our mission of building a just and sustainable world, at a time when translating ambition into action is urgently needed, and more possible. We are delighted to share it with our 300+ member companies, as well as our many partners from civil society, philanthropy, and indeed the wider world that shares our vision of a world in which all people can thrive on a healthy planet.
This is a time when just and sustainable business is more indispensable to business leaders than ever before.
If we have learned anything from the turbulence of the last two years, it is how essential it is for business to develop resilient business strategies. We also know in clear terms how essential it is for business to take decisive action to address the climate crisis and deliver truly inclusive economic progress in equitable societies.
In developing our approach, we have spoken with many of our member companies and other experts in the field. It is absolutely clear that just and sustainable business is now firmly mainstream; even more, it is understood as an essential ingredient in business success and indispensable for tackling the world’s primary challenges. It is equally clear that companies continue to search for the answers that enable exponential progress, with credible, demonstrable impact.
Our Objectives
Through our 2025 strategy, we will be focusing our energies on the major challenges of our time:
- Decisive action to shift to a net-zero economy that preserves nature
- Inclusive, equitable economies based on social justice and human rights
- Responsible use of technology to advance socially beneficial innovation, and
- Business transformation to achieve these goals
We will pursue these objectives by expanding our agenda and offerings, emphasizing impact, and building a growing global team.
What We’re Doing: An Expanded Agenda
In addition to our existing commitments to human rights, climate, equity, inclusion and justice, and sustainability management, we are investing in effort to achieve progress on social justice, ESG governance, and nature. The time is right to ensure that corporate governance evolves to meet 21st-century challenges. To ensure that business commitments are translated into real action to advance social justice, later this spring we will be launching a new Center for Business and Social Justice. And we will be augmenting our efforts to address climate by expanding our work with our members on business and nature.
How We’re Doing It: An Emphasis on Impact
We are focusing our efforts on achieving impact with three principles that guide our work. We aim for impact in everything we do. We build connections between issues, and between business and society, and we provide candid guidance that enables credible solutions.
Who We Are: A Growing Global Team of Sustainability Experts
Our strategy rests on building an even more talented, diverse, and global team. We aim to exceed 200 colleagues for the first time in 2022, with an expanded international presence in Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Washington, DC—to deliver for our growing cohort of member companies around the world, creating value for business and society.
In the months ahead, hopefully as in-person gatherings return to enable the personal connections that build creative solutions, we will share more of our thinking. We also are eager to hear from you on how to make the most of our joint opportunity, and to create the collaborative solutions the world so badly needs.
Our world appears seriously broken today. We are facing many interconnected and profound challenges. We approach the next few years confident that strengthened commitments to just and sustainable business can turn the tide. We also see the promise of fundamental change that can build—and rebuild—a world that is truly equitable, sustainable, and innovative. We intend to do all we can, working with you, to deliver on that promise.
Topics
Let’s talk about how BSR can help you to transform your business and achieve your sustainability goals.
