Sustainable Brands® Announces Partnership with MIT Sloan School of Management

SAN FRANCISCO - April 3, 2014 - PRLog -- SAN FRANCISCO--Sustainable Brands® recently announced MIT Sloan School of Management Sustainability Initiative as co-presenting partner for the Sustainable Brands ’14 New Metrics conference, September 24-26, 2014 in Boston, MA. A gathering point for sustainability executives, business strategists and financial leaders from across the globe, the partnership fosters collaboration with academia in creating a new vision for progress and innovation.

“This partnership is built on the promise of creating a flourishing future integrating financial, ecological, and societal metrics to drive business success,” says KoAnn Vikoren Skyrzniarz, Founder of Sustainable Brands. “The Sustainable Brands community will benefit from MIT Sloan’s systems thinking approach to problem solving and world-class research by facilitating more education and learning. In turn, they will find lasting value in connecting  their next generation leaders to industry sector leaders in the Sustainable Brands community.”

The alignment of goals and values between Sustainable Brands and MIT Sloan is what makes the partnership a strong factor in pushing toward innovative business performance metrics. "The challenge with metrics for sustainability is that we need to expand our mental models—from our impacts on quarterly earnings to socio-economic effects on communities across our global value chains. We have to understand much more complex feedbacks on business performance. MIT Sloan is the home base of systems thinking and system dynamics modeling, and we hope to bring that sensibility to the table," says Jason Jay, lecturer and Director of the Sustainability Initiative at MIT Sloan.

"Through our teaching and research at MIT Sloan, we have come to understand that there is a real need for tools and metrics that help organizations ‘hardwire’ sustainability concerns into the way they do business,” adds Jay. “Sustainable Brands has taken a leadership role by convening people at the vanguard of this effort through the New Metrics conference. We are excited to co-host the conference this year.”

Sloan works to fulfill the Sustainability Initiative through offering a Sustainability Certificate program for Masters students, organizing a sustainability lunch series to help students grow their careers, holding alumni events, creating innovative partnerships, and providing a ground-breaking faculty to activate its vision and values. “MIT Sloan is known for a rigorous, analytic approach to management, and its Sustainability Initiative engages the school in this century's most significant management challenges for business and society,” Jay explains. To learn more about the Sustainability Initiative, go to http://mitsloan.mit.edu/sustainability/

This year’s conference will be held at the Royal Sonesta Hotel and MIT Sloan will host the pre-conference workshops on Wednesday, September 24^th on campus. Breakthrough research methods, provocative insights and case studies, as well as innovative measurement tools will all be featured during the conference. Over 60 speakers contributed last year and nearly 250 professionals from across the globe attended. Registration is now open and sponsorship opportunities are available for this year’s event. More information is available at http://www.sustainablebrands.com/events/newmetrics14

About Sustainable Brands

Sustainable Brands^® is the premier global community of brand innovators who are shaping the future of commerce worldwide. Since 2006, our mission has been to inspire, engage and equip today’s business and brand leaders to prosper for the near and long term by leading the way to a better future. Digitally published news articles and issues-focused conversation topics, internationally known conferences and regional events, a robust e-learning library and peer-to-peer membership groups all facilitate community learning and engagement throughout the year. Sustainable Brands is hosted by Sustainable Brands Worldwide, a division of Sustainable Life Media headquartered in San Francisco, CA.