Major global corporations are already trying to adopt sustainable business practices. Now the City of Cleveland is asking for more involvement from Northeast Ohio's corporations in its 10-year campaign to rebuild the local economy around sustainable strategies.
View full sizeThe City of Cleveland's sixth annual sustainability summit drew more than 500 people to Cleveland Public Hall this week where for two days they brainstormed to develop strategies aimed at furthering sustainable practices for business, public policy and everyday life. The enormous model of the earth reminded them what is at stake. Case Western Reserve University professors David Cooperrider and Ronald Fry and a team of associates facilitated the discussions, using a process developed at CWRU known as appreciative inquiry. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The City of Cleveland's 10-year campaign to make sustainability a household word and sustainable practices the common language of business, government and everyday life is expected to soon be looking for a few good corporate chief executives.
As may as 25 Northeast Ohio CEOs may be asked to serve on a blue ribbon commission that will meet periodically, probably twice a year.
The commission, based partly on the Boston Green Ribbon Commission, which focuses on dealing with climate change, would in Cleveland develop overarching, or macro, initiatives such as helping manufacturers to eliminate waste, use less energy, finance efficiency upgrades and collaborate to highlight "best practices."
They could also tackle other problems, for example, recommending strategies to rebuild neighborhoods, reduce traffic congestion, accelerate locally grown food programs or prepare for severe weather.
John Cleveland, executive director of the Boston commission, addressed the more than 500 people participating this year in the city's sixth annual sustainability summit. He noted in his keynote speech Wednesday that the strong grassroots participation in Cleveland's 10-year sustainability campaign is a real strength that can guarantee permanent change.
The idea of formally involving Greater Cleveland's CEOs in a separate advisory commission boiled up Thursday during one of the many small-group discussions at the summit and the group recommended the proposal during the closing minutes.
The proposal included a recommendation that the city make a major effort in traditional and social media to publicize the commission's work during the 2016 Republican National Convention.
And it was an idea based on the realization that the nearly 2,000 people who have been involved since 2009 in Sustainable Cleveland 2019 have created something that the region's corporations will value.
That something -- more like a movement of very committed individuals, many from the region's businesses themselves -- is on the threshold of what Case Western Reserve University professor David Cooperrider believes can be developed into comprehensive corporate and public policy that will gain national traction.
CWRU has created a Strategic Innovations Lab that will be home to national security scholar Patrick Doherty and retired U.S. Marine Col. Mark "Puck" Mykleby. Both worked for the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank, where they published a "grand strategy" integrating foreign policy with domestic economic development initiatives.
Mykleby capped his military career as a strategic assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
He co-authored a 21st Century grand strategy for the Pentagon. That study, later published as "A National Strategic Narrative," reached conclusions similar to what Doherty has been writing -- namely that the nation lacks a cohesive and comprehensive strategy to deal simultaneously with global ecological problems that will only become worse as a rising middle class in developing countries competes for energy and natural resources, a decaying infrastructure at home and a sluggish economy that is actually a "contained depression" that the government has addressed by printing more money.
Mykleby on Wednesday addressed the crowd attending this year's sustainability summit, before they broke into small group discussions.
He told them "America needs a new business plan" and that the current national policies date back to the Cold War.
Cooperrider, during a Thursday interview, said Mykleby and Doherty contacted CWRU about locating at the local unversity.
"I told them you can come out with a 500-page strategic report. But that is not going to be enough. Even the concept of a grand strategy must be in a more modern context.
"You need to build a community of consensus," he said. "It's one thing to have a great report, and another to have people across the country engaged in this consensus -- taking this point of view into their own thinking, their own communities and using it to help their regions come up with their own economic and green strategies of the future. "
Cooperrider has used that same way of thinking to moderate the annual summit meetings since 2009, using a technique developed at CWRU and now known as "appreciative inquiry" or AI as used around the world by governments, major corporations and religious organizations.
The aim of AI, Cooperrider has written, is to accentuate the positive, shifting problem solving from a top-down mode that begins by asking "what's wrong" to a bottom-up process that starts by asking "what's possible."