ESG initiatives suddenly find themselves in the political crosshairs. Laws have been passed in several states – and others are pending – requiring legal action against companies not considered supportive enough of fossil fuels. There is even pressure on firms who refuse to support certain cable or wish to make greener investments. Occasionally, a company resists being pulled down by this type of political pressure, but it isn't easy: the gravity well surrounding today's business climate is both deep and wide. Resistance requires courage and by no means all such companies have that. The example of one company that did have the courage to resist and, by so doing, caused important change far beyond their own walls, is instructive for today's browbeaten executives, who are mustering the courage to do the right thing.

Goldilocks happened on a beautiful property but in those days the criteria for such a purchase were simple and few: too big or too small? Too hot or too cold? And so on. Today’s buyers must beware of an entirely new set of parameters when deciding where to live: too many hurricanes, or too little water? Is there an atmospheric river in the forecast, or a 20-year drought? Climate change is about to render large swathes of what has been the cradle of civilization uninhabitable, while other areas, previously covered in ice, are being prepped for cultivation. Let’s face it, compared to today’s buyers, Goldilocks had it easy!

Corals and other marine dwellers are already crushed by so many pressures that adding sunblock to the list is simply piling on. Yet thousands of tons of the stuff is piled onto coral reefs annually, and though some brands call themselves ‘coral safe’ and various governments are banning specific ingredients, the science of the sunscreen-coral relationship is by no means clear. There are, however, simple alternatives – hats, clothes, and umbrellas, for example – that humans, with our penchant for the new and modern, have largely abandoned.

When the ancient Hebrews crossed the Red Sea, they would have found a barrier more daunting than the chariots of their pursuers: huge masses both deep and wide of colorful, fruitful, and razor-sharp corals. Today, though corals appear headed for extinction around the world, those in the Red Sea are surprisingly healthy and abundant. In learning why these polyps have proven so hardy while others perish, science may have learned how to save the world’s gasping and bleaching reefs.

It seems almost impossible for a large, slow-moving white balloon, seen easily through binoculars, to sail across the United States for days without the authorities' knowledge. It happened because our high-tech detection equipment was tuned to identify fast-moving, superheated, metallic objects... a ballistic missile, say, or a MiG 29 fighter jet. Once we recalibrated the systems to include cold, white, bucolic blimps, voila! Several more were identified in North American airspace almost immediately. The same principles apply to business, and especially to business risk. In a world reeling from a blistering pace of change, and amid radically new local and global threats, the same old approaches to risk won’t cut it. To render unknown, unseen risks visible, one must look differently. The instruments with which risk is identified must be recalibrated, the parameters widened dramatically.

Paddling giant NRS wondered what might happen if consumers knew of the company's values. Would revenues increase? What value would the market place on brand-level sustainability commitments vs. product-level initiatives? Using our Customers Science™ approach, we ran scenarios using the Valutus InVEST™ model and found... well, let's just say doing good does indeed lead to doing well, so long as people know about it.

Ideas, opinions, and innovations evolve, as do the methods for tracking them. But most of those methods are mired in media metrics, or 20th-century tracking. But one method – ours – is E3Evolution™, a better choice for those who need to know which trends sustainability leaders are seeing, what they are saying about them, and any steps they may be taking to address them.