[MUSIC] This is Mike Rosenberg with Strategy and Sustainability. I want to start on session six, which is the last session in this course. Session six has to do with how to develop a sustainability strategy which makes sense for your business and its specific situation in the markets it's serving, and the countries it's operating in and in and the regulatory climate in which it finds itself. What we've seen so far in this course is, in session one we looked at the relationship between business and the environment. In Session II, we looked at five strategic issues, which I believe are critically important and have to do with that relationship. And, in fact, I believe very strongly that CEOs, members of the Board of Directors, and senior executives need to look at these issues regardless of their political point of view, or even their ethical approach to things. Because their fiduciary responsibility to the business over time depends on getting these things right. In session III we looked at five kind of generic strategic options that companies can take. And then part of what we'll do in this session is think about which of those makes most sense for your business. In Session IV, we looked at environmental interest groups which, again, will come up in this session to some degree. And, finally, we looked in Session V at differences across different industries and different countries or different parts of the world. We looked at some examples, of course, because in a course like this we cannot look at the entire planet and all industrial sectors. So in this segment I'll be explaining what the framework is. Now, the strategic framework which I believe companies can use to figure this out. There'll be a segment on how complicated the mathematics and how much work actually is to go into doing this right, because there are very few shortcuts in this space. Segment three we'll talk about the importance of looking both backwards and forwards in time, and figuring out what the right strategy is. In segment four we'll look at the role of the board. Segment five will be how can I actually do the plan, how to actually make it happen. And then in segment six, we'll try to wrap up the entire course, looking again at what we've done so far. So the framework, if you remember, has to do with environmental sensibility against level of compliance, and there are these five different, if you like, generic strategies. We will not be spending a lot of time on break the law, because I do not recommend break the law. So when we talk about differences, the first thing we talked about was industry segments, because it's not the same as to be in mining as it is to be in generation of electrical power or running a business school. The environmental footprint of the business pool is pretty light. There's not a lot of regulation on us in this space. But our MBA students are very much concerned about our footprint, so we must do something for them, if for no other reason. Regions of the world, New York is not the same as London, it's not the same as Shanghai. The interest groups, because dealing with the Wildlife Conservation Society is not the same thing as dealing with Greenpeace. And then you have the company, itself. Taking some examples from automotive, Ford Motor Company, it's a family owned company. Generations of Ford family members deeply involved in running the company, but with a very large shareholder base, and really beholden to the same rules as any other large companies, but with very special relationship with the Ford family. That's different than Tata Motors, where Ratan Tata can pretty much do what he likes. He's got shareholders, he's got the governor's body, but really there, the Tata family itself, has much more power, I think, than the Ford family does at Ford. And then you have GM, which is an enormous corporation with lots of shareholders, lots of different issues of corporate governance. And what the firm is like, and who owns it, and how it's run, of course, has a lot to do with what's the right strategy for that firm. One of the issues, which we'll talk about a little more in segment three, is path dependency, this is what academics call. The idea is, where you're going depends upon where you've been, and we can't just go someplace if we don't even know where we've been. And, in fact, the things that a company does overtime, to some degree, condition the future, or at least sets this tone for how difficult it will be to do something else in the future. So a company which has a history of environmental compliance, will have an easier time moving to show and tell, or going far beyond compliance, than a company that has never really paid attention in the past. History is important and path dependency is the concept which links the past to the future. So the framework will look at the different industry segments in which the companies involved. It will look at the regions of the world in which it's operating in. It'll look at the interest groups and the type of interest groups which are paying attention to the company or the activities it does. And, finally, look at the company itself. And then look at where this has been in the past, where it is in the present and, of course, where it's going in the future. Once all that analytical work is done, then it becomes possible to actually pick the right strategy, or the right basic kind of strategy that a company needs to follow and finally develop the lines of action which are appropriate to move ahead. So this will be the framework that we're looking at, and in the next few segments I'll fill in some of the details that one would need to understand in order to attack the framework in a vigorous way. [MUSIC]
