A conversation with Maurizio Zollo

A new business model: SDGs and new forms of capital.

Nowadays, sustainability is spreading is influence in different fields of everyday life. The 2030
Agenda is changing the job market, priorities of companies and how governance can act to link
global challenges and human ones. Business is switching its traditional form and markets as well.
Mr. Maurizio Zollo, a very special guest for this Global conversation, offered an opinion on the
identification of a path to supporting the transition of business towards a new constructive role;
enhancing the capacity of global systems to reach sustainable way of thinking and acting.

He is Professor of Strategy and Sustainability,

Head of the Department of Management and
Entrepreneurship and Scientific Director of the
Leonardo Centre; an initiative to explore new
ways of doing business in order to regenerate
economies, communities and natural zones
around the world. before starting his academic
career, he was a strategy consultant at
McKinsey & Co. and investment banker at
Merrill Lynch in New York.
He is the director of two research programs: the
GOLDEN(Global Organizational Learning and Development Network) and another one about
neuroscience of innovation and sustainability decisions.

SDGs focus on global challenges : impact of maladies on humanity, unequal distribution of income
wealth and opportunity, health issues and environmental tragedies. All these challenges are
connected to each other.

What the business can do?

There are lot of actors in the society that needs to change their behavior in order to collaborate
helping the transition towards solutions to these maladies.
There are powerful actors beyond the private sector, such as governments or social enterprises,
that can start thinking about a new strategy with the funding from finance, not only the private
sector but also the public one. Finally, academia has its own role for social science and business
research; it is useful to explore knowledge.
All the actors needs to re-think about their own role and shift their attention towards a more
sustainable systematic way of acting. Here we can see a radical transition for humanity.

Taking a position to see business as a source or remedy of social maladies or both, can offer a the
possibility to analyze better different attitudes around market developments. An example can be
the computation of the supply chain of top 1000 companies that generate the 70% of global GDP.
On one hand it is visible the power of corporations and on the other hand, it means that 1000
people can make substantial changes to make their business going on.

Today, companies have different components.

They have a purpose, revealed by their behavior in the context of a governance, with a board of
directors (CEO, roles of managers, shareholders) that need to communicate in the interest of the
company; a personal strategy builds up their actions, the extent of their decisions.
There are more components, culture and leadership (soft ones), or control systems and operating
functions (supply chain, innovation and marketing)

The link of all these components is related to SDGs.

The impact on communities of their production and their position on global market. The
relationship between community-business can change and improve, looking at different
perspective at the same time.

How can we think about the solutions ?

A new way to organize business enterprises, fulfill expectations form financial investors and the
other ones; excluding the supremacy of financial capital, there are other forms of capitals: human
(employees), social (relationship the company with external environment), natural (air, land,
water).
In a traditional way of acting, a company operates on a natural capital landscape and receives
some licenses to authorize some levels of pollution in exchanges of expectations or a positive
contribution for the quality of life of a particular community; no exacerbations of the mixture of
these four kinds of capitals are allowed.
Business is trying to put aside the monetary value of action, transforming it in a functional and
innovative process to listen to stakeholder needs, control environmental impacts and being aware
of the relationship with employees.
The “soft aspects”, culture & leadership, are the hardest thing that need a change.

Anyway, there are some ways to approach a business evolution for an evident social impact, a
fundamental re-thinking in practical terms on how to make this transition. A combination of three
assets can be useful: organizational experiments (analysis, work made by companies),
collaborative networks, large scale behavioral insights.

Putting again in practice the correlation between SDGs, sustainability and business evolution, it is
clear that a new strategy has been made up: SDGs centered model, reshape of actions of the
portfolio management, organizational experiments and collaboration of leaders to create new
solutions. In particular leaders have a huge responsibility to move forward sustainable stages,
triggering a soft aspect transition. (Culture)

The difference from “Today” and “Tomorrow” vision is made up by finding a perfect balance
between risk-cost efficiency and revenues creation towards a social value for a better life. The
transition is here: from the stakeholder orientation to a different way of living for society.