Sustainability – A New Awareness
Editora Gente publishes book that shows how to educate and innovate in all of sustainability’s aspects.
The socioeconomic changes of the past 20 years have deeply affected the behavior of companies, in various industries, which were up to now used to maximizing profits only. The idea of social responsibility incorporated in business is therefore relatively new. With the emergence of new demands and more pressure for transparency in business, organizations are now pressured to act more responsibly towards their target audiences.
In response, Editora Gente is launching “Sustainability XXI – Educating and Innovating according to a New Awareness” authored by Rodrigo Costa da Rocha Loures, an example of creativity, initiative, and innovation. The book shows how to direct science and technology towards public ends, avoiding social and environmental damage caused by lack of a systemic understanding of their long-term effects.
With vast innovation-based business experience the author is a member of the Science and Technology Council of the President’s Office; president of the Federation of Industries of the State of
His vision derives from deep empirical study and practical application in his company Nutrimental, national leading manufacturer of cereal snack bars. The book aims at stimulating reflection and dialog about the challenges of teaching responsible business administration and the value of sustainable innovation as paths to achieving human wellbeing on the planet, he says.
Loures sustains that sustainability today is “the new name for development, including its several dimensions: economic, social, cultural, physico-territorial and environmental, politico-institutional, scientific-technological, and for some, mainly spiritual.”
The entrepreneur from Paraná also draws a parallel between the present and the future, between awareness – the seeds of sustainability – and the paths toward innovation and change in favor of a sustainable world. “This book documents the creative role played by the Brazilians that have supported the ten Principles of Good Corporate Governance and the six Principles of Responsible Business Education of the Global Compact (proposed by Kofi Annan, UN’s former Secretary-General). It reveals how Brazil is moving toward more ethical businesses and markets thus helping to define sustainability and sustainable innovation for the 21st century,” says Hazel Henderson, president of Ethical Markets Media and one of the world’s leaders advocating the economic development movement for social and environmental benefit.
“Sustainability is the newest and biggest opportunity for growth, businesses, and development of a new economy – The Green Economy. At the turn of the 20th century, the challenge was to harness resources to obtain scale. We have done that, better than we should, perhaps. Now we must quickly incorporate this new understanding for fear of jeopardizing the human species and its existence on this planet,” adds the author.
“Sustainability XXI” will be released by Editora Gente in December and will be available at all bookstores.
About the author:
Rodrigo Costa da Rocha Loures was born on July 1,
Book Data:
Title: Sustentabilidade XXI - Educar e inovar sob uma nova consciência
Author: Rodrigo Costa da Rocha Loures
Publisher: Editora Gente
ISBN: 978-85-7312-672-3
Category: Management
Format: 17X24
Pages: 256
Price:R$ 59,90
Year of publication and edition number: 2009 / 1st edition
For more information contact:
Cia. da Informação + 55 (11) 3071-3494
Mônica Ferreira - monicaf@ciadainformacao.com.br (Ext. 27)
What do we want to sustain?
Trivialized by excessive exposition and razzle-dazzle caused by its adoption by corporations – some legitimately, but others not so much – the word sustainability has acquired numerous interpretations. For some, it says it all; for others it means nothing. In “Sustainability XXI – Educating and Innovating according to a New Awareness,” the entrepreneur from Paraná, Rodrigo da Rocha Loures, founder of Nutrimental, addresses the theme in an original and provocative way. He asks: After all, what is it we want to sustain, considering our current way of life and production?
To answer this question “that seems easy, but is not”, the industrialist proposes a new way of looking at the world. In the organizational world, this translates into “seeing through interactive lenses and calling people’s attention to new knowledge and action.” A look that requires collaborative knowledge in several expert domains.
Sixty-six years old, with three children and eight grandchildren, Loures heads the Federation of Industries of the State of Paraná (FIEP) and is vice-president of the National Confederation of Industry (CNI), where he coordinates the Corporate Mobilization for Innovation (MEI). The business leader advocates radical change at the core of economic thinking based, above all, in effective dialog among government, corporations, academia, organized civil society, and citizens.
With the publication of “Sustainability XXI”, Rodrigo da Rocha Loures attempts to provoke reflection and dialog on the challenge of providing responsible business administration education if favor of human wellbeing. He says that “understanding that the space for mitigation is no longer there and that there is a need for radically different ways of getting organized and producing leads to the conclusion that the moment has come for building and maintaining the ability to really live in harmony, have a systemic look and use co-inspiration. This, in turn, can only take place where liberating and constructive dialog is secured.”
In other words, the author argues that technological advancements, hopes of consumers and citizens, and global realities are changing the way public and private companies are relating with their internal and external audiences. And this brings about change, particularly in issues related to ethics – sustainability’s touching stone.
Nutrimental: Learning and Reinventing
In forty-five years of business activity in the food industry, the industrialist from Paraná has always been somehow connected with innovation. His company, Nutrimental, was created based on food technology research at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), in 1968. Ten years later, its liquid equity amounted to US$ 20 million. After 20 years, the equity tripled and the company underwent marketing, organizational, and above all, cultural reformulation. “Many young professionals came aboard – like trainees – because we needed to bring the new generations to our company. We trusted them and delegated with all the implications it entails. Everything changed. It was a big turn”, says the company’s founder.
In 1992, while Nutrimental was undergoing its transformation process, the government restructured its mother-child food supplementation program, which was then an important source of income for the company, and suspended payments. Five years of losses ensued, until 1997, when once more the company dared to innovate and to reinvent itself. The path taken toward building “an avant-garde organization, capable of interacting successfully even in an unsteady context like today’s”, was a development approach called Appreciative Inquiry, created by North-American David Cooperrider, professor of organizational behavior of the Weatherhead School of Management of Case Western Reserve University and president of the board of the Business as an Agent of World Benefit (BAWB).
It took some time for people to grasp the essence of Appreciative Inquiry, but when it happened, the most important decisions of the company began to be made in as a team, with the participation of all stakeholders. For this to happen, it was necessary for employees to demonstrate maturity, creativity, and above all, commitment with the whole, for even if a decision is made locally, it certainly impacts the company as a whole.” Today, Nutrimental is number one in the cereal bars market and second in children flours.
Education and Innovation in Sustainability
The appreciative approach brought results in different areas: financial, individual, and organizational, tells the entrepreneur Rodrigo Rocha Loures. “Increase in productivity reflected the effort made by the company’s whole team, since people had more energy to work, felt motivated, more committed, wanted to see better results and believed that they had something to contribute,” he writes.
The entrepreneur’s practical experience and in-depth studies showed that it was necessary to rethink higher education in the field of applied social sciences, particularly in Business Administration, Economics, and Technology courses. “They will turn out the executives that, for the thirty or forty years to come, will make decisions, influence the dynamics of production and consumption,” ponders the author.
With this in mind, Rodrigo Rocha Loures took on the role of coordinator of BAWB-GFAL (Business as an Agent of World Benefit – Global Forum Latin America), a movement sponsored by the UN Global Compact to promote cultural transformation in the business world. “The Global Forum was conceived to try to come up with ways of reducing, or even bridging the existing gap between the contents of business university courses and the actual needs of corporations and general society,” says the entrepreneur.
Rodrigo Rocha Loures explains that the Global Forum Latin America’s (GFAL) proposal is to have “the sustainable development theme become a part of the strategic agenda of business administration courses and to have educational authorities pay the necessary attention to management education with a view to sustainable development.”
Loures illustrates his book with examples of actions promoted in Paraná by the FIEP System, based on the Appreciative Inquiry methodology that highlights positive aspects of reality, proposed by a new awareness and by transforming business education practices.
In the book, the entrepreneur also describes the experience of creating the University of Industry (Unindus), “a learning and innovation lab for Brazilian industry, where new forms of learning are made easier and widespread, where people are agents of the much-needed transformation in how to organize and manage business companies, projects, and teams.”
According to Rocha Loures, today’s main challenge is to accomplish “interactive relationship between business and academia – and between them and the global context – so that sustainability will become the central and ongoing reference in production and transmission of business management knowledge.”
The book also features a Preface by Claudio de Moura Castro, President of the Advisory Board of Pythagoras College, and one of the most famous education experts in
