Sustainability is coming of age –that at least is the message that came out of last week’s event on Triple Bottom Line, “L’Attitude” organized by Great Lakes Institute of Management(GLIM) at Chennai. The event, which aptly advocated “Prosperity with Accountability” focused on the need for corporates to focus not just on one P, that is Profit, but also on the other 2 Ps – Planet and People.
Some of the speakers at the event included Dr. A.P. J. Abdul Kalam and quite a few CEOs and business leaders from a variety of industries including petrochemicals, real estate among others. The details of the speeches can be found here and my colleague, Sugirtha Veni’s take on the event can be found here.
EAI has been interacting closely with GLIM over the past several months and the officials at GLIM have been kind enough to invite me and my colleagues at EAI to share our experiences with the students at GLIM. For L’Attitude, EAI worked closely with GLIM in writing a case study for one of their events on Strategy– Ranniti. The case dealt with an opportunity for a corporate house with a heart to diversify into a few sustainable businesses given below
a. rural off-grid solar lighting systems business
b. electronics waste (e-Waste) recycling business
The case study can be downloaded here.
For the event Ranniti, B-schools across India sent their entries and 6 teams were shortlisted for the final presentation. The teams were from IIM Kolkata , IIM Kozhikode, IIM Indore, IIM Lucknow and GIM, Goa(2 teams).
I had the opportunity to judge the presentations from some of the brightest business talent in the country and it was heartening to note that the teams had put lot of effort to come up with some really nice ideas. The winner of the competition was the team from IIM Lucknow and the runner up was from IIM Indore. Their presentations can be found below.
Team IIM Lucknow :
Team IIM Indore:
Overall, I felt that the organizers of the event at GLIM had succeeded in creating more awareness about Triple Bottom Line and it is now for all us to ensure that the TBL concept does not end up as just a fad.
