News Release

Social, environmental factors affecting business
are focus of March 30-31 conference

CHAPEL HILL – Community and environmental considerations are increasingly affecting the profitability of companies worldwide, and this trend will be the focus of a March 30-31 conference sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Center for Sustainable Enterprise.

The center is based at the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School’s Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise.

At "Reinventing Today’s Business for the Challenges of Tomorrow," corporate executives and business academics will explore strategies for creating innovative business models and organizational processes that will position business for competitive advantage in this environment.

"We are bringing business and academic leaders together to share major social and environmental trends that are influencing business and explore how managers can respond to meet future challenges," said conference chairman Dr. Albert H. Segars, RBC Centura distinguished professor of entrepreneurship at UNC Kenan-Flagler and director of the Center for Sustainable Enterprise.

Registration for the conference, to be held at the Hilton Hotel Raleigh-Durham at Research Triangle Park, is $550 for corporate participants and $375 for academic and nonprofit participants. More conference information is available by contacting Ruth Tolman at (919) 962-1499 or cse@unc.edu or by visiting www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/ki/cse/Conference/.

Dr. Janine Benyus, a biologist and author of "Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature," will give the keynote address on biomimicry, a discipline that studies nature’s best ideas to solve human problems. She will share examples from her work with such companies as GE, HP, Interface Inc. and SC Johnson.

Conference participants will collaborate to address, among other topics:

• Global social and environmental trends and their implications for business strategy;
• Corporate social responsibility reporting, metrics and evaluation tools;
• Models of innovation, research and development and design for clean-technology products;
• Integration of environment management into corporate strategy; and
• Emerging opportunities in environmental markets.

A wide range of organizations will be represented as presenters in the sessions, including Bank of America, Intel Corp., the Timberland Co., SJF Ventures, Cherokee Investment Properties LLC, Progress Energy, IDEO, Novozymes A/S, Strategic Sustainability Consulting, the Global Branding Institute and Caux Round Table.

Faculty members from UNC Kenan-Flagler, Duke University, the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Columbia University, Bentley College, Northeastern University, Thunderbird’s Garvin School of International Management and the University of Vermont also will be represented in the sessions.

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UNC Kenan-Flagler contact: Allison Adams, (919) 962-7235 or aadams@unc.edu