Umbrex is pleased to welcome Fahad Modak with The Eating Soup Company. Fahad shares his practice: A forward-thinking innovation executive with +20 years of product and consultative selling experience to help improve profit margins by finding opportunities to increase revenue or reduce costs. I am adept in storytelling with the natural ability to influence CxOs with insights and without authority. I infuse common sense when it is no longer common. I possess Lean Six Sigma Master Blackbelt and certification in…

Every year climate action gains traction in the acknowledgement of urgency and dire need, and, thankfully, many businesses are taking action. To help more business leaders move in a sustainable, and profitable, direction Jennifer Hartz shares how to get ESG right in this article. “In the previous Hartz & Minds issue, we defined ESG, explained its history, shared examples of challenges faced in each area, and emphasized that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is rapidly becoming the norm. Why? Because it…

This five-minute article co-authored by Norbert Paddags explains how private banking can become more profitable with ESG investments.  Sustainable investing continues to gain in importance, driven by investor expectations and regulation. This creates challenges for portfolio management and the pricing of cost-intensive ESG services. If these are mastered, one can do good and earn money at the same time. On March 10, 2021, the “Regulation on Sustainability-related Disclosure Requirements in the Financial Services Sector”, or Disclosure Regulation for short, will…

Jessica Graf shares an article and report supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on an initiative launched in Africa that was developed to improve the nutritional status of lower-income consumers by creating a new business model that would also be sustainable for the company. For several decades, pioneer companies, entrepreneurs and non-profit organizations have attempted to build women networks selling “beneficial” products in their communities, with some level of success. However, the execution of women sales networks has…

Stephanie Hsu shares an article that explores the issue Asian American Pacific Islander non-profits (AAPI) face when trying to access stable funding.  This  past spring, we were in Chinatown San Francisco visiting low-income  Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) youth who live in 150 square foot tenements with their families, sharing bathrooms and a kitchen with a dozen families on the same floor. Their families are the unseen restaurant workers, delivery drivers, and street sweepers, whose average household income is $25,000….

Odin Muhlenbein shares a report he co-authored with Florian Rutsch, Katharina Wagner, and Paul Ziesche on how governments can unlock the potential of social entrepreneurs for the common good.  One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, at a time when the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) seem further out of reach, it is clear that the need to find, fund and support transformative solutions for the challenges we are facing has grown more urgent. In January 2020, Ashoka and…

Jessica Graf shares a TEDx talk on sanitation, social innovation, and how it could change the world for the better.           Access the talk, Empathy, not MBAs, on LinkedIn….

Ushma Pandya shares a vitaly relevant post that can help your company develop an ESG strategy. ESG stands for Environmental, Social & Governance and lately it is the “it” word in the business community. But how does one go about developing an ESG strategy? ESG framework is a set of standards used by investors to evaluate companies, usually for investments. But it is also a way for companies to communicate with the non-finance community on their environmental stewardship, their relationship…

Belden Menkus shares a podcast interview with Charles Wookey. Our guest is Charles Wookey, CEO of Blueprint for Better Business, an independent charity whose purpose is to create a better society through better business. Charles was one of the founders of Blueprint and a key contributor to the thinking behind the Blueprint approach which asserts that people are not solely self-interested and that business is not solely driven by profit. Under his leadership Blueprint has moved from being a small…

Alun Thomas shares a short post on the “green steel” initiative in the UK.  The first consignment of “Green Steel” i.e., steel produced without consuming coal, just shipped to Volvo. This is one of many such initiatives  The EU is exploring extending its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) to the steel industry, levelling the playing field and ensuring that Green Steel has competitive advantage over conventional steel via its emissions trading system, whether that steel is imported or manufactured in…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Nidhi Chadda with Enzo Advisors. Nidhi is a generalist growth investor and advisor across public and private markets. She is currently the Founder and CEO of Enzo Advisors, a global sustainability consulting firm focused on helping companies build best-in-class sustainable business models within an ESG construct and works closely with institutional investors to integrate ESG policies and frameworks across their investment processes. Prior to launching Enzo Advisors, Nidhi was a portfolio manager at RBC Global…

  Kaihan Krippendorff addresses corporate responsibility and climate change and why the energy industry is adding environmental practices to business growth strategies. Our planet is facing an uncertain future. The impact of climate change has reached a point of crisis, and it is up to the organizations of today, and to all of us, to take action. This week our guest on the Outthinkers podcast, Michael Raynor, author of The Strategy Paradox and co-author of The Innovator’s Solution, emphasized the…

  Norbert Paddags co-wrote this article that explains why private banking can grow and become more profitable, in a good way. Sustainable investments continue to gain in importance, driven by investor expectations and regulation. This creates challenges for portfolio management and the pricing of cost-intensive ESG services. If these are mastered, one can do good and earn money in the process. On March 10, 2021, the “Regulation on Sustainability-Related Disclosure Obligations in the Financial Services Sector”, or Disclosure Regulation for…

  If you are thinking about building a marketing strategy for the coming year, this post from Kaihan Krippendorff’s company blog may have the direction you need. The “ultimate strategy” is explained and explored.  Is “be good” a part of your 2021 strategy? If not, you should reconsider. When I was in business school, we learned that companies exist to do one thing: maximize shareholder value. At Outthinker, we’ve been talking for years about how this belief has become defunct….

  Dan Markovitz explains why using post-it notes may not be the best way to organize your workflow. One of my clients, a physician in an academic medical center, has been struggling with her personal kanban. She avoided all the common pitfalls—she kept finished tasks in her Done column, limited her WIP, and used Super Sticky Post-It notes to ensure that she didn’t lose any work to evening janitorial services. But she wasn’t making a whole lot of progress, which…