20 January 2020 – Aris Vrettos has been appointed Director of CISL’s new Centre for Business Transformation. The Centre will convene forward-looking companies, undertake research and explore innovative strategies and mechanisms to enable business to play a transformative role in delivering sustainability within the next decade.
Lindsay Hooper, CISL’s Executive Director, Education said:
“Through his work with senior leaders internationally and The Prince of Wales's Business and Sustainability Programme Aris has developed deep insight into sustainable business and has significant experience of defining and pushing the boundaries of business leadership. This will be invaluable in his new role in the Centre, working with leading businesses to explore key questions on the role of business in society and to develop new thinking and solutions.”
Aris Vrettos said:
“Business is at the centre of the global sustainability transition, yet even the most ambitious companies often encounter outdated narratives of business excellence and leadership and gaps in thinking, tools and mechanisms to thrive commercially as a sustainable business. Our goal is to create a forum where committed business leaders can explore and collaborate on important challenges and ambitions and work alongside academics and innovators in Cambridge and beyond to co-create, pilot and advocate for new transformative solutions.”
The Centre’s work on sustainable business transformation will build CISL’s 30 year experience and expertise on sustainability leadership, focusing on new transformational practices including technological and organisational innovation and a critical review of business management and change theories.
Working closely with CISL’s research and education teams the Centre aims to help companies align people, systems and processes with positive outcomes for society and the environment by:
- convening organisations to raise the collective level of ambition, understand common challenges and barriers to business progress and co-create or co-fund solutions
- conducting practitioner-focused research and thought leadership to address the gaps in the evidence base that are barriers to business progress (including via The Prince of Wales Global Sustainability Fellowship Programme)
- supporting individual companies to find specific answers, develop and pilot new, scalable solutions to common business challenges that push the boundaries of leading practice and help companies measure and optimise their impact and value to society
The Centre includes CISL’s strategic advisory services, which help companies integrate and implement ambitious sustainability strategies. It also includes CISL’s Business & Nature team, which helps businesses to recognise their impacts and dependencies on nature, develop evidence based goals and align their strategies and decision-making processes.
Over the next 12 months the Centre will create new workstreams and communities of practice including a Rewiring Business group and a study into the role of business in addressing inequalities.