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In the beginning: The gizmo that changed the world

In 1982, Time magazine named the personal computer its “Machine of the Year.” Subtitled “the computer moves in," Time’s designation foreshadowed what its writers could barely imagine. The mainframe had been around for decades, of course; but they were anything but personal, requiring a crew to run one.

It was also in 1982 when John Walker and a dozen or so of his colleagues pooled their resources to launch Autodesk and its flagship product AutoCAD.

Unbeknownst to the editors at Time, and nearly everyone else, silicon and Moore’s Law would usher in a new age of digital design and, more importantly, a renaissance of human imagination.

And it was all based on an odd little gizmo yet unsold on a skeptical public.

Imagination: The best tool

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” - Albert Einstein

What the public then grappled with, people like Walker and fellow programmer Michael Riddle understood: The computer could be a visualization tool for designers. AutoCAD was the culmination of Riddle’s early work -- which, at the time, was still awaiting the hardware to achieve its commercial potential.

Autodesk started on the idea of building better tools for designers. From there, it took off. The company not only created the tools, but also an ethos of design in service of building a better world. Such statements are often dismissed as marketing-speak. Who doesn't want to "make a better world," after all?

But Autodesk has walked the talk for more than three decades, opening avenues of possibility for designers and engineers to "create a future where we all live well and within the limits of our planet."

Who could have imagined all this back in 1982?

Lynelle Cameron on designing for a better world

TriplePundit champions the idea that a company's culture is just as important as its bottom line. Businesses provide real value by giving their employees a sense of purpose, their customers quality, and their shareholders a return on their investment.

Autodesk embodies these core principles. It's the kind of company that stays on TriplePundit's radar.

We sat down with Lynelle Cameron, VP of sustainability for Autodesk and CEO of the Autodesk Foundation, for an hour-long discussion about how designers and techies can continue to craft the economy of tomorrow.

Many readers may already be familiar with Cameron's leadership, but it's worthy of review.  Her experience in business and environmental stewardship comes, one might say, from the ground up.

She got her feet wet by leading expeditions for NOLS, the global nonprofit wilderness training school. As program director of the Mountain Institute, she worked in some of the planet’s most remote mountain communities.

Cameron then took her talents and experience to the corporate world, developing sustainability programs for Hewlett Packard and her years of leadership with Autodesk and now the Autodesk Foundation.

In her spare time, she sits on several boards, including the Center for Environmental Health and the Biomimicry Institute.

Our conversation ranged from the election of U.S. President Donald Trump to the brokenness of our relationship with nature, and how the human imagination can still mend it.

No solution is not first imagined. Within the context of a growing urban population, Cameron articulated the role Autodesk can play in imagining a better-designed world, especially through her leadership of the Autodesk Foundation, and how other stakeholders can do their part.

The song remains the same

Anticipating my first question, Cameron was unhesitant, reinforcing one core message: While a hindrance, the election of Donald Trump is no deterrent for Autodesk. Any reversal in policy and tone from the new administration and its global implications doesn’t alter the company’s objective.

Since our talk, Trump has made good on his promise to go after Obama-era environmental policy and initiatives. His series of troubling, hastily thought-out executive orders threaten decades of bipartisan support for fundamental U.S. environmental policy.

Trump's "keep-everybody-off-balance" leadership style is jarring, even for the industries Trump purports to champion. There is an inevitable sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop. One hundred-plus days in, there is little sign that will change.

But like it or not, Trump is learning (perhaps) that just because he says it is so, does not make it so.

In any case, "it absolutely hasn’t changed our strategy at all,” Cameron told 3p of Autodesk.

For Cameron and her colleagues, the mixed messages and antagonistic tone from Washington only reinforce their obligation to take a stand. Whether climate or immigration,"It has shone a spotlight on the urgency for the private sector to voice our opinion on the role of government."

"There is a groundswell among U.S. companies to not be quiet."

We all inhabit a developing world

History is replete with examples of the consequences of a zero-sum, one-versus-the-other worldview.  Besides the human suffering triggered by divisions of class, ethnicity, religion or what have you, attempts to meaningfully address the "wicked social problems" of climate change and sustainable human development often appear beyond reach. Even a staunch, protectionist, winner-take-all strategy cannot stave off the reality of planetary limits. Eventually, the tragedy of the commons arrives at everyone's back door.

Decades of struggling to define our "common yet differentiated responsibilities" among nations in a world divided have led to the Paris climate agreement and the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. Plainly aspirational at their core, these global directives arguably represent the best chance we have for an appropriate international response.

“Two-thirds of our customers are from outside the U.S.," Cameron told us. And where governments fall short, she emphasizes the responsibility of the global private sector to take up the slack.

"We have got to engage our customers to help solve this climate challenge," she insisted, "because they're uniquely suited to [do so] and are making some of the most important decisions, regardless of what happens in the government and other sectors."

"What we try to do is lead by example, and I think others will follow suit."

Setting the corporate benchmark

Autodesk set corporate science-based emissions targets in 2009. Many thought it "was ridiculous way back then," Cameron recalled. Today? Not so much.

"Same thing with putting climate in your 10-K [an annual financial filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission], powering your business with renewable energy, or setting an internal price on carbon."

Autodesk continues to set an example for others to follow. Cameron is "optimistic" that in the eight years since the company outlined those first C-FACT targets, convincing clients and partners of the "business case" for sustainability "no longer need be so much of a discussion."

"I think our customers see the connection between energy and cost savings," Cameron said. "They understand that if you want to be in business for the long-term, climate change is something you need to consider."

It is a common and treacherous path we are on. Industrialized or emerging, rich or poor, we all in a sense inhabit a developing world.

Design like you give a damn

In the essay Journey to Earthland: The Great Transition to Planetary Civilization, Paul Raskin writes, “Simulation models help illuminate the technical plausibility of different scenarios by evaluating the realism of their assumed socioeconomic patterns in light of resource and environmental constraints."

That's a fancy way of saying that modeling, simulation, and visualization leads to better designs and better outcomes.That may not be exactly what Raskin had in mind, but It for Autodesk, it remains the driving principle.

• AEC: From AutoCAD to Insight 360 (and everything in between), Autodesk continues to transform the AEC (architecture, construction and engineering) sector. Autodesk tools are used daily by architects and engineers around the world. As for construction, Autodesk now looks to the opportunity for "not just optimizing the design of a building, but the construction site."


• Manufacturing: No longer some esoteric, impractical process, 3-D printing continues to come into its own.

Using Autodesk software, Airbus Industries designed the "bionic partition" for use in the A320 jetliner. The bit of the airplane separating the main cabin from the galley, the partition seems a rather insignificant part of the airliner. But in an airplane, weight is never insignificant. The bionic partition is nearly 50 percent lighter than current designs. Once testing is complete, the component will reduce fuel consumption, costs, and emissions.

Using the process of "generative design," the partition is just a first step in what Airbus calls its "vision of the plane of 2050."

Generative design mimics "nature's evolutionary approach," and is "super exciting," said Cameron, who, as mentioned earlier, sits on the board of the Biomimicry Institute.

"[Generative design] leverages the best of the technology and computer with people focusing on what they do best."

We're only scratching the surface with these examples, but they show what's possible when, to borrow from the title of Cameron Sinclair's book, people have the tools and motivation to "design like they give a damn."

Let people flourish

As impressive as her resume is, it's when you sit down and talk with Cameron that the passion and motivation for what she does are most palpable. Her career is more a calling than a job.

From its inception way back in 1982, the brilliance of Autodesk’s evolution as a company is allowing people like Cameron, and so many others, to flourish. The company's ability to influence and support sustainable design across the globe makes it what the authors of "Influencer" call a "positive deviant." Where others see problems, Cameron and her colleagues see solutions.

She sums it up best: "Thank God I am working at this company right now. I can't think of a better place with which to effect the change that needs to happen."

It is this drive and unflagging optimism that enable their customers and partners to flourish. Indeed, Camerons recognizes partnership and connection as key Autodesk's success.

Large or small, startup or Fortune 500, rural village or metropolis, connecting people, shaping ideas, and harnessing the best of the human imagination is, as Cameron put it, Autodesk's "secret sauce."

"People have agency," Cameron insisted. "I think we are collectively more ready to make that shift."

In a human-designed world, what we imagine is what becomes real.

Image credits: 1) Unsplash, 2) sushipingdanist; 3) wikimedia.org

By Tom Szaky

Saturday marked 100 days in office for U.S. President Donald J. Trump. The benchmark coincided with the return of the People's Climate March, where over 300,000 demonstrators across the nation called for action on global warming. And it came seven days after the international March for Science, the kick-off to a Week of Action beginning on Earth Day.

Given the environmental platform upon which the president campaigned last year, it was clear that a President Trump would significantly alter the direction taken by the previous administration. One pre-election promise was the cancellation or renegotiation of American participation in the Paris climate agreement; the administration recently pushed back meetings scheduled to decide the U.S. stance on the deal.

Back in March, Trump signed an executive order to review the Clean Power Plan for the purpose of ultimately dismantling it. Last week a federal judge agreed to delay pending litigation of the plan at the behest of the Trump administration, keeping the plan sidelined while the White House works to repeal it. So far, the president and his new cabinet have made moves on several regulations and initiatives that make good on campaign promises and have real implications for environmental policy and global action plans for sustainability.

The current climate (some pun intended) raises the question of how environmentally-minded organizations may operate under the new direction favored by this administration.

Will a Trump presidency negatively affect non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and nonprofits dedicated to a policy agenda that supports science-backed policy for regulating energy production, emissions standards and environmental protection? The deep irony is that the answer is no.

Some NGOs partnered with the folks who organized the nationwide climate marches, including the Sierra Club, the NAACP and the Natural Resources Defense Council. On missions for social justice, environmental equity and more sustainable socioeconomic systems, these organizations function by circumventing the economic and structural limitations of public governmental programs. This is to say that because these not-for-profit organizations are independent from government, they are able to work for policy change and special interests where the government is insufficient.

For example, as it stands in the U.S. and most countries around the world, public works sees most “waste” outputs falling outside the scope of recyclability (aka resource recovery), tracking them for landfilling or incineration. This is because the value of most items cannot be sold on back-end channels for more than the cost of collection, logistics and processing in these publicly funded systems, providing no economic incentive to recycle them because of the lack of profit.

However, a report from the World Economic Forum and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation revealed that since most plastic packaging is used only once, 95 percent of the value of plastic packaging material -- worth $80 billion to $120 billion annually -- is lost to the economy.

Diverting potentially valuable resources from being lost to the economy requires its own set of resources that the public system does not currently have. NGOs are in the position to raise funding independently or work with companies, manufacturers and major brands to sponsor solutions for difficult-to-recycle waste streams. And they can effectively provide the technology, infrastructure, logistics, and funding to recover materials and feed them back into the value system.

Many NGOs are funded by donations and run by volunteers. The dismantling of public and government systems (i.e. the EPA) may have created a situation where people are more active in stewardship. Consumers are more likely to donate money and time than they were in previous administrations, when people expected the government to concern themselves with these matters.

This presidency will make clear that innovations do not suffer, but flourish, under new conditions set forth by public administrations. NGOs have the opportunity to step up their ideological initiatives despite decreased social and environmental regulations, acting as advocates and problem-solvers in the face of rising expectations.

Because the thing is, the Climate March was long planned to occur 100 days into the first term of the 45th President of the United States, whether that president was Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton or a third-party candidate.

The first Climate March hit the streets on the eve of the 2014 U.N. Climate Summit in New York City. Over 100,000 demonstrators demanded “bold and urgent action of the global climate crisis” by addressing “a commitment to the fights for economic and racial justice.” At the time, it was the largest climate change demonstration in history. And the People's Climate Movement gained momentum over the course of two American presidencies, providing leadership and building a platform.

Climate change and global warming are not Trump’s fault. But his administration is acting in support of fossil fuels, deregulation of industry and practices that continue to drive the planet in an unsustainable direction. I am optimistic that environmental NGOs, in their dedication to accelerating policy built upon evidence-based science, will remain on track and serve as examples for other entities in both the public and private sectors.

Image credit: Flickr/Amaury Laporte

Tom Szaky is the founder and CEO of TerraCycle, a global leader in the collection and repurposing of otherwise non-recyclable pre and post-consumer waste. TerraCycle operates in 21 countries, working with the world’s largest brands and companies to create national platforms to recycle products and packaging that currently go to landfill or incineration.

By Daphne Stanford

What will be the fate of income inequality here in the United States over the next few years? The news generally isn’t good, but we can’t give in to hopelessness and despair. That is, we should support public policies that work in the interest of low-income children and adults. If you weren’t aware, here’s a sobering statistic: More than 43 million people in the U.S. live below the poverty line; a full third of those people, around 14.3 million, are children.

Although it feels like an overwhelming topic, a few different arenas are significant in their relevance to recent news and progress on the public policy front: new trends in workplace flexibility, the shrinking middle class, and the complicated nature of housing availability.

Workplace trends

With all the recent talk about workplaces becoming more flexible and making remote time a standard part of job descriptions, I can’t help but wonder what this new trend looks like in action. Is there an average demographic profile for the type of employee who appreciates this new flexibility the most? Are some workers harmed by the expectation of productivity, regardless of location?

As the New York Times reports: “Workers who spend none or all of their time out of the office reported feeling equally engaged last year. Those who spent 60 percent to 80 percent of their time away from the office had the highest rates of engagement.”

Contrary to what one might expect of older workers, AARP found that 74 percent of older Americans want to work flexibly and 34 percent would like to work from home. But that statistic feels incomplete, somehow, when coupled with another stat about younger employees: “68 percent of job seekers who are millennials said an option to work remotely would greatly increase their interest in specific employers.”

It would follow, then, that there appears to be more enthusiasm for workplace flexibility and remote work among younger employees than among baby boomers and older adults. Perhaps it is more complicated than age. The preference also seems connected to workers’ relative ease with mobile technology like smartphones, mobile apps, and remote communication platforms like Skype and Slack. According to Rutgers University, a 2015 Gallup survey found that 37 percent of respondents telecommuted, compared to 9 percent in 1995. And experts think telecommuters will reprsesnt close to 50 percent of the workforce by 2020.

Perhaps the breakdown in age is not as wide as the gap between genders. A recent series in the Atlantic examined the issue of work-life balance in light of raising children — emphasizing the enormous drop-off that occurs with many working women when it comes time to choose between parenting and a career. The problem is that it’s simply not economically viable to continue climbing the proverbial corporate ladder if there are children in the picture, due to the exorbitant price of child care, as well as the lack of workplace flexibility. More remote work options would likely help the situation immensely, as well as more affordable child care.

Affordable housing

There simply doesn’t seem to be enough affordable housing to accommodate everyone, and the problem isn’t limited to low-income households. As CNN reported, 11 million people in the United States spent at least half their income on housing last year, while 21.3 million people spent 30 percent or more of their paycheck on rent. Many people work more than one job to get by. 

Part of the underlying problem in many formerly affordable areas is the average housing cost — whether it be in the form of rentals or home ownership. This issue is so pressing across America that many are calling it an affordable housing crisis.

The situation is a bit less dire if you happen to be an artist of some kind looking for housing in a big city. For example, some of the most affordable rental housing in Pittsburgh consists of rent-controlled apartments for working artists. But this kind of subsidized housing is not without controversy: Some argue that housing for low-income artists in places like Minnesota serves mostly white people, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported last year.

Understandably, this type of observation is more than a little controversial and problematic, if it is true. As Jessie Van Berkel of the Star Tribune reported, Angie Hall Sandifer has never seen another black woman living in the Northern Warehouse Artists’ Cooperative, where she resides. Similar stories have played out in urban artists' communities across the country. Although New York City’s Soho and Lower East Side were once sketchy neighborhoods filled with affordable working artists’ lofts, gentrification has made these areas utterly unaffordable for working artists today.

NPR’s Code Switch attempted to tackle the problem recently, noting that even though buying a house should be a better deal than renting, these days — due to high rental rates — many people who would ordinarily consider buying can’t because of new, tighter lending standards. However, at the end of the proverbial day, the crux of the problem is that people with money want to live in the most popular big cities, and an influx of people with money is largely what is driving rents up in places like New York and San Francisco.

The shrinking middle class

If the above details are any indication, race relations in the U.S. will continue to be a problem. The recent spate of police brutality involving African American men is also indicative of this fact, and according to University of Southern California, 61 percent of Americans think that race relations have deteriorated. Consider the continuing problem of lead contamination in Flint, Michigan, and it's easy to see how social justice concerns enter into the day-to-day realities of African Americans in much of the U.S.

As the Detroit Metro Times reported last month, the lead that contaminated Flint’s water supply not only caused massive damage to an already crumbling infrastructure, but it was also responsible for an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease that killed at least 12 people and sickened many others. Peter Hammer, a law professor at Wayne State University Law School, contends that "nothing about what happened in Flint was accidental," further arguing: “But for our country’s failure to understand the root cause of municipal distress in the context of structural racism, the Flint tragedy would never have occurred.”

In other words, the stark reality seems to be that lack of money equates to lack to political clout — which leaves us where we are today. The city of Flint now plans to permanently stay with Great Lakes Water Authority, a less costly alternative than the nearby Karegnondi pipeline. Water still needs to be run through a filter or boiled in order to be safe enough to drink, and water flowing into some homes still far exceeds safe lead levels. 

If what happened in Flint is an example of what lack of political clout can buy American citizens, a bleak picture of equality emerges -- one in which people aren’t truly equal but are only as valuable as their net worth. Daniel Moss of TruthOut argues that water should be accessible to everyone, similar to the way education is considered a public good — as in Ecuador and South Africa, where access to affordable water is written into the national constitution; after all, the U.N. General Assembly recently declared affordable water to be a human right.

Therefore, we would all pay into the costs of water access, rather than assigning the burden to individual households. Part of the argument is connected to the distribution structure of water usage: Moss reported: “In the U.S., energy producers use just shy of 50 percent of our nation’s water, followed by irrigators. Households use about 1 percent.” Considering how little households use, when compared to utility and agricultural entities, this restructuring seems only fair.

*  *  *

What constitutes ‘public health’ is relative: does health refer merely to cholesterol levels and cancer statistics, or is it also connected to an overall sense of well-being that permeates those who manage to fit an hour of meditation into their schedules, each day. Alternately — beyond physical health — should public health refer to our collective sense of wellness that can only exist if basic needs are met? Do we have clean water to drink and good food to eat? Do we have a stable place to live and a job that pays the bills and also allows us time to attend to our lives outside of work?

These are the questions with answers that tend to divide us into one of two proverbial camps consisting of the haves and have-nots. We are left, then, with more questions: how can each of us contribute to a collective movement to move some of these realities and statistics closer to ideal situations? There are so many layers, but there is effort we can make on both private and public levels. In addition to effecting change within private companies and corporations via CSR policies, internal HR policies, and social dynamics, we must mobilize as a collective group to raise our political voices. We should express our opinions to our representatives, rather than keeping them to ourselves. Now is not the time for silence.  

Image Source: USDA

Daphne Stanford hosts “The Poetry Show!” on KRBX, her local community radio station, every Sunday at 5 p.m. A writer of poetry, nonfiction, and lyric essays, her favorite pastimes include hiking, bicycling, and good conversation with friends and family.  Follow her on Twitter @TPS_on_KRBX.

Engaging employees in community action is a win-win for companies: It improves corporate image, makes the workplace more enjoyable and, of course, benefits the community. 

Points of Light, a nonprofit focused on voluntary service, says employee volunteering in particular can improve relations with stakeholders by positioning a company as a leader in the community. It also boosts employee morale, loyalty and productivity, said Jenny Lawson, president of networks for Points of Light. 

“Employee volunteer programs are important because they sit at the intersection of three goods,” Lawson told TriplePundit. First is the “good that corporate volunteering programs can do for communities." This can range from beach clean-ups to playground builds to garden plantings and school painting. And when companies expand their volunteering efforts to include skills-based and pro-bono volunteering, “the value of that service can go up 500 percent," which saves nonprofits from spending money on financial strategy or marketing plans.

Employee volunteering also offers plenty of "good" for workers and their employers. Volunteering connects people to a “sense of purpose and meaning, which supports more engaged employees in the workplace,” Lawson explained. Companies with volunteering programs have “more engaged employees, increased employee retention and reduced recruiting costs that translate into real bottom-line value."

Beginning an employee engagement program

“The first step to engaging employees in community action is to develop a corporate strategy,” Susan Hunt Stevens, founder and CEO of the employee engagement platform WeSpire, told TriplePundit. And the best employee engagement programs “provide volunteer opportunities for employees to address issues that are strategic to the company, as well as empower them to serve their communities in ways that they’re most passionate about."

Stevens identified “four key elements" essential to any successful employee engagement program: connect, commit, communicate and count.

To connect is to ensure an employee engagement program “is clearly tied to a business initiative,” such as a mission, vision or values statement, Stevens explained. To commit is to ensure there is support from a company’s executive team. Communication is the key to developing and maintaining an effective program. Or, as Stevens put it, “No matter how well-planned a program is, if it’s not effectively communicated to employees, participation levels will be low.” Lastly, counting a program means to “hold it to the same standards as other business initiatives and that includes collecting and measuring data related to it.”

How to start a pro-bono program

The Taproot Foundation seeks to engage professionals in pro bono work, which it defines as “the donation of professional services to social change organizations.” Mobilizing your employees to help community organizations can be vastly impactful and empowering for all parties -- but it may take time. 

A company looking to start a pro bono program must “shed the expectation that they have a huge, knockout program in year one,” advised Catherine Ward, national director of advisory services for the Taproot Foundation.

The best thing a company can do is to “start small ... begin with a pilot.” She suggests that companies ask themselves certain questions before starting a pro bono program:

• What social impact does your company wish to create? Get specific.


• What skills and expertise are available at your company? Keep in mind that the talent available at your company is its greatest asset.


• What business objectives do you want your pro bono program to support? As Ward said, “Whatever matters most to your business, that’s what you should focus on.”


• What’s your company’s context, and what constraints do you need to design around? Ward calls that a company’s “fixed variables.”

AT&T embeds community service into its company culture

AT&T is a company with over 280,000 employees and a robust program to engage them. In 2015, AT&T employees volunteered 5.4 million hours through employee and retiree volunteer programs, worth an estimated $124 million. And 120,000 employees took part in an Employee Resource group focused on volunteerism. The following year, employees provided over a million hours in student mentoring alone.

“Community service has been an integral part of our company culture for over 100 years,” Jason Leiker, assistant vice president of AT&T Community Engagement, told TriplePundit. Employees donate “their time and talent every day to make the communities where they live and work a better place."  

AT&T describes its Do One Thing (DOT) initiative as a voluntary, company-wide effort to encourage employees to commit to taking regular and measurable actions that are good for their communities and themselves. “DOT personalizes sustainability and makes it relevant and meaningful to each employee,” Leiker explained. The DOT activities of employees range from water use reduction to encouraging peers to use less paper in the office.

“More than 49,900 employees have chosen more than 92,000 DOTs, which have resulted in impressive collective results such as keeping more than 6 million pounds of trash out of landfills and saving more than 41 million gallons of water,” Leiker said.

In 2015 AT&T launched Your Community Day, a paid day off for management employees to be able to volunteer in an organization or cause. Through Your Community Day, management employees can volunteer their services for one work day a year to an IRS tax-exempt charitable organization and still be paid by AT&T. “This time is above and beyond any AT&T organized volunteer activities where employees participate, and employees can use these hours whenever they want throughout the year,” Leiker explained. 

Employee Resource Groups are a core component of AT&T's program and have over 120,000 members who donated 362,000 hours of volunteer time and granted over $619,000 in scholarships in 2015. ERGs help support AT&T’s “commitment to diversity and inclusion through their efforts in the workplace, marketplace and the community,” Belinda Grant Anderson, spokesperson for AT&T diversity and inclusion told TriplePundit.

In other words, a good employee engagement program gets employees excited about community action while raising money for good causes.

Image credits: 1) Flickr/Fiat Chrysler Automobiles; 2) Flickr/State Farm; 3) Flickr/BMW Foundation

Last week Gett, a Tel Aviv-based ride-hailing company, announced it was buying Juno for $200 million. As reported by Johana Bhuiyan of Recode, “While Gett is acquiring Juno’s assets — including its founding team — Juno will still operate as an individual platform for now, called Juno by Gett.” The two ride-hailing companies will join forces, hoping to become the second largest player in the New York City market after Uber, a place now occupied by Lyft.

This could be tough as Lyft provides about 55,000 trips a day in New York City, compared to about 35,000 trips a day with Juno and Gett combined. (Uber, just for comparison, gives 250,000 rides a day in New York.)

But the real challenge Gett and Juno must now address is a backlash from Juno’s drivers, who learned that the stock plan Juno once offered them is now void. Instead drivers can receive cash payouts, which are far smaller than what they expected: about $100 to $200 per person, according to some estimates.

Keren Kessel, a Juno spokeswoman, told Quartz in an email that the company’s stock program is being replaced with a “new cash incentive plan” for drivers who continue with Juno and agree to the terms. "She declined to elaborate on what that plan would look like,” reported Alison Griswold of Quartz.

In the meantime, the Internet of Ownership -- a directory and portal for the platform co-op ecosystem -- announced in a tweet that “due to its withdraw of promises to share equity w/ drivers, @Juno has been removed from our #platformcoop directory.”

Regardless of whether a new plan will be offered to Gett/Juno drivers and what it will be, this is still a shock for many employees who joined Juno and enthusiastically supported its new premise to become a driver-friendly platform that cares about the drivers and sees them as an integral and important part of the company.

While we need to wait and see what consequences of Juno may face following this acquisition, there are already a few lessons that I see in this case that are relevant not just for Juno, but also for many other platforms in the sharing economy.

1. Relationships matter

This story shows how much relationships matter, at least to drivers. I take rides with Juno almost every week. And every time I ask the drivers what they like about Juno, they talk about the smaller commission the company charges them. I think there is more to it.

If it was purely about the money, then Juno drivers wouldn’t be as upset as they are now because they will still be charged only 10 percent of every ride under Gett. It is true that drivers feel disappointed about the unfulfilled equity promise, but I doubt this is just because of the money – I don’t believe many drivers actually thought they could get rich from it. I believe the main value in the equity plan was that it was a signal to the drivers that they’re truly respected by the company and are part of the company.

It seemed to be working pretty well – as its founder and CEO Talmon Marco told CNBC in an interview last October: “Our drivers refer to Juno as ‘we,' we are Juno. When was the last time you heard Uber driver saying ‘we’ at Uber. It’s ‘they.' It’s always ‘they.'”

Now, we see the backlash – “I don’t think I’ll drive for Juno or Gett anymore,” Steven Savder, who drives for Uber, Lyft, Juno and Gett, told Recode. “I’m saving more commission with Juno and Gett, but at least I know where Lyft and Uber stand. They treat us like dirt, but I know where they stand. Juno sold us false promises.”

This is a lesson in making promises, but also in the value of relationships. Sharing economy platforms that build their supply side purely on economics are exposed to greater risk due to low loyalty levels among their service providers. Platforms that build their supply side on relationships, on the other hand, will be far more resilient and be in a better position for the long-term.

2. Money matters

The Rideshare Guy blog estimates that Juno loses $2.50 to $8.75 per ride (depending mainly on the discount passengers receive, which can be up to 35 percent). Multiplied by 25,000 daily rides, the blog suggests the company loses “anywhere between $1.9 million to $6.6 million per month.”

As the company apparently raised only $30 million, you can see that Juno couldn’t continue operating for long without taking some measures. The company could look for another round of funding, dig deeper into its pockets (Marco sold its last startup, Viber, for $900 million), increase prices/reduce discount to riders or increase the commission it takes from drivers, or look for a partner/buyer.

I won’t get into the question of whether the choice the company made is the best one. I guess only time will tell. The lesson though is that money matters -- or, in other words: You can have a great vision coupled with a human-centered approach to business, but if you can’t operationalize your vision effectively and figure out how to make the unit economics work, you will find yourself out of business pretty quickly.

This is an important lesson especially for platform co-ops and other platforms that focus on values. Values can certainly be key to your value proposition, but you can’t avoid the competitive environment. And if you can’t marry values with value creation and delivery effectively, then it’s game over for you.

3. Transparency matters

Gett said it’s paying $200 million to acquire Juno. Apparently most drivers will get a $100 to $200 payout. The Rideshare Guy blog did the math: “If Juno had 12,000 active drivers and they all got a $100 to $200 payment, that’s only a $1.2 million to $2.4 million payment. So what about the other $198 million?”

The answer to this question is probably complex, but it's an answer that should be given to the drivers and, frankly, the public. If Juno is truly committed to being “an ethical ride sharing service,” as it described itself in an email to the drivers announcing on the acquisition by Gett, it needs to walk the talk and explain to employees who is getting what from the deal and why they get only 1 percent of the payment.

Traditional business may be able to avoid such level of transparency, but not for long as clarity becomes key to anyone claiming to be a socially responsible company. For platforms, this is not even a short-term option: Those that avoid it will find themselves dealing with frustrated service providers with little trust in the platform and no incentive to provide customers with great service. That road leads in only one direction.

4. Leadership matters

Another lesson from this case pertains to leadership. Some may say that crafting a new vision, working hard to successfully operationalize it and taking whatever steps are necessary to make it work is indeed a manifestation of good leadership. This may have been true in the past, but I don’t believe this is the case anymore, especially not in the case of platforms.

Platform leadership requires a system leadership approach, one where leaders “need to look beyond what their firms own or control, monitoring and addressing complexity outside their firms," Martin Reeves et al. explained in the Harvard Business Review last year. "CEOs must ensure that their companies contribute positively to the system while receiving benefits sufficient to justify participation. Companies that fail to create value for key stakeholders in the broader system will eventually be marginalized.”

In addition, platform leadership requires the ability to empathize not just with your customers, but also with the service providers, communicate it effectively, and be transparent and honest.

Effective platform leaders must embrace new skills. Traditional leadership is no longer effective because platforms are not traditional business environments. So far we haven’t seen this type of leadership in this case, which seems to be one of the reasons why drivers are so disappointed.

5. Culture matters

In a previous article comparing Juno’s business model with Uber’s, I wrote the following about Juno:

“An important part of the company’s attractiveness to drivers comes from providing them with equity. This equity can be realized either when the company becomes public or is sold, which means there will probably be some internal pressure to do so. However, in both cases the culture of the company could dramatically change as a result of a new owner’s agenda or pressure from the financial markets. Etsy, in its public company form, is a good example of this tension.”

Juno’s business model was grounded, as I wrote, in a humane culture -- “one that respects its service providers and is centered around their needs as much as it is around those of the riders.”

Now, even if Juno miraculously recovers from this crisis without any long-term damage, the question is still out there: What’s the culture of Gett? Will it be just like Juno’s culture? I doubt this will be the case, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Beyond the notion that culture is important, the real lesson here is how fragile a culture is when it is mainly based on its founder’s mindset and has no beams to support it. Platforms that want to build resilient cultures will need to look for better ways to ensure their cultures can survive different shocks, including the one we see in this acquisition.

Image credit: Gett

The solar boom has resulted in more jobs and lower electricity bills across the U.S., but this rapidly growing sector has also endured its share of dubious business practices.

As the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating several solar companies over how they disclose the cancellation of solar power projects. And mired in the controversy is Tesla, which still faces questions over its much anticipated Model 3 and a quarterly report that revealed larger financial losses than projected.

WSJ reporter Kirsten Grind suggested that companies, including upstart Sunrun and legacy SolarCity (which Tesla acquired last year), may have been less than forthcoming about how many potential customers nixed their contracts after signing up for residential solar power systems.

Such numbers are important to investors as they attempt to gauge these companies’ future performance within what is still a very new industry. Meteoric growth within the sector has led to fierce competition and aggressive tactics, including constant telemarketing, door-to-door solicitation, and even following potential customers at stores such as Lowe’s and Home Depot.

The result is the signing of many solar installation contracts, which are quite often canceled after consumers had second thoughts.

Strong-armed maneuvers by solar companies have led to a rash of complaints to attorneys general in states such as Texas, Oregon and California. With cancellation rates at individual companies approaching 50 percent, some investors believe these figures must be disclosed. But some firms may have been less than transparent about how many signed contracts actually become revenue-generating projects.

Tesla has since told Grind that it is no longer sending its sales force to homeowners’ front doors, but the SEC investigation is still underway.

This revelation comes as Tesla remains mum about when exactly its new line of sleek solar panels will hit the market.

This is not the first time Tesla has had to cope with an SEC inquiry. Last year, the agency investigated the company for not disclosing a customer’s death tied to a Tesla vehicle’s auto-pilot feature. Some reporters questioned the timing of that disclosure to the sale of about $2 billion in company stock by Tesla and its founder, Elon Musk, which resulted Musk slapping back in an angry tweet storm.

While Tesla has long enjoyed a reputation for delivering vehicles with superior performance, and continues to gain consumer loyalty, this latest chapter shows that the company can hardly rest on its laurels.

Last month, Tesla announced with fanfare that it would also enter the trucking industry. Analysts say that both autonomous and electric technologies could transform this sector into one that is cleaner and safer. Considering its short and impressive history, Tesla’s bold announcement temporarily cheered investors and its stock price enjoyed a quick spike in value. But not so fast, said some startups, including Starsky Robotics -- which is keen to develop self-driving trucks that could haul freight across the U.S.

Another electric truck company, the Workhorse Group, also says it has a plug-in hybrid truck that could give current and future trucking companies such as Tesla a run for their money.

The Workhorse W-15 PHEV pickup truck, which boasts 460 horsepower and can go zero to 60 miles per hour in 5.5 seconds, wowed some attendees at a recent auto show in Southern California. Its sticker price for now is $52,500, which could at first put off some fleet managers, to whom Workhorse is marketing this truck.

But Kyle Field of the blog CleanTechnica estimates that the truck’s long-term fuel savings and lower maintenance costs would result in a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) than a comparable Ford F-150. “The savings add up quickly, paying off the purchase price premium in around 2 years,” Field wrote, “meaning that fleet managers will be able to rake in these savings for the rest of the life of the vehicle, resulting in the lower TCO.”

Image credit: Steve Jurvetson/Flickr

 

"Drawdown," edited by Paul Hawken, is a collection of the most effective actions to remove global warming pollutants from the atmosphere.

Hawken and his team of advisors tapped research fellows from around the world. The book describes the top 80 solutions and 20 near-term options, as well as the environmental impacts of their adoption.

According to the book's description: "The list is comprised primarily of 'no regrets' solutions — actions that make sense to take regardless of their climate impact since they have intrinsic benefits to communities and economies. These initiatives improve lives, create jobs, restore the environment, enhance security, generate resilience, and advance human health."

These solutions are presented with the number of gigatons of carbon-equivalent they can "draw down" and the cost and prospective savings of implementation.

Since global warming suffers from a measurement communication problem, I found the use of this simple metric refreshing. It harkens to the concept of a "carbon budget," the amount of carbon that can safely be emitted without triggering the worst impacts of climate change. Experts estimate that the carbon equivalent we can safely emit is somewhere around 1,000 gigatons, and we've already burned through at least 515. That leaves at most 485 gigatons before the great unknown hits, and we're rapidly and quite literally burning through them.

According to the World Resources Institute, we'll exceed our 1,000-gigaton budget by 2045 if we continue with business as usual. That's the year my infant daughter will turn 28. We could just divide up the remaining budget, but that's a political non-starter because it quickly becomes apparent that there isn't nearly enough carbon pie to go around. In 2015, for example, worldwide CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning, cement production and land use change totaled nearly 40 gigatons. And of course we need global actions to limit these numbers -- policy and business commitments take time (we don't have) to implement.

By organizing his book into solutions by gigaton, Hawken captured the most important projects we need to capitalize on in order to avoid those great unknowns. While the list is demonstrably actionable, it also shows in stark black and white the challenge we are up against. If every initiative is implemented fully as planned, Hawken's group estimates we can remove 1,051 gigatons of carbon equivalent from the atmosphere. They call that the "plausible scenario."

Hawken's solutions provide a fresh take for those who feel helpless in the face of all this bad news.

"We wanted to write something that was inclusive, that had narratives, that was engaging," Hawken told 3p. "The imagery [of climate change] also has become very, very stereotyped. Everything on climate is a hurricane, melting glacier or, you know, a skinny polar bear on an ice flow looking very frightened. I mean, that polar bear should get royalties."

The solutions highlighted in the book run the gamut from the familiar like electric vehicle adoption and solar panels to those that might be totally new like "silvopasture," the integration of trees and pasture or forage into livestock grazing territory. Foodies will recognize this technique for producing the famed Spanish ham, jamon iberico; and environmentalists will soon spout the carbon sequestration potential of the soil-tree hybrid approach to animal husbandry.

Despite the stark budget numbers, Hawken's team didn't start with a gigaton goal to "draw down" and work backward. Instead, they considered all possible carbon reduction strategies and analyzed them one-by-one, calculating adoption rates and potential savings.

"And then we hit the total button. We were just as surprised as anybody can be" by the solutions that rose to the top, Hawken told us. The top 10 solutions, in order of impact, are: refrigerant management, wind turbines (onshore), reduced food waste, plant-rich diets, tropical forest protection, educating girls, family planning, solar farms, silvopasture, and rooftop solar. You can see them all here.

"I mean, really the conventional wisdom is 'solar wind, solar, solar wind' and 'stop eating so much meat' and 'stop cutting the rain forests,' and we're good to go and we have a hall pass to the 22nd century. That's just not scientifically true. It's absolutely not true."

We need all these solutions, everything that's happening already and everything far-fetched, too. Here's the rest of our conversation, edited for clarity.
TriplePundit: One of these cases that has really surprised and excited people is the power of investing in women and girls as a means to draw down carbon. You found that when women are educated, they have fewer children on a very large scale. 

Paul Hawken: The impact of education between a girl who's taken out of the educational system (if she ever got in) at puberty and a girl who is supported to study beyond that is remarkable. And the rate of reproduction is different too, because the girl who goes to school longer becomes a woman more on her terms -- and not on the terms of religion or culture or father or family or societal pressures and mores or whatever.

She makes very different choices, and she has an average of two children. Since she's more educated, she can earn more money and put more resources into those children, and those children imitate their mom and dad. That is to say, they have smaller families and et cetera.

It's a compounding benefit. And the interesting thing about that is then we also looked at family planning, which is different than educating girls. But actually they both end up as family planning. It's just different pathways. There is no bright line between the two in terms of measuring the impact. But there is a measurement of the impact and that's the U.N. high-to-medium population numbers for 2050. A difference between 10.8 billion and 9.7 billion [people]. And that's what the carbon impact numbers are based on.

3p: Were there any solutions that you expected to make the cut that didn't or that you expected to have a much bigger impact than they did?

PH: There were a lot of things! Water conservation: In California, water is energy. I think that the number is 25 percent of all electrical energy is used to move water. You can just look at a quart of water and do the calculation, you know? So then it stands to reason that if you significantly reduce water consumption, you're reducing energy consumption. It just isn't true in most of the rest of the world, and so we were projecting out from our experience and assuming that those things would make the cut. They're so important. I'm not saying they're not. I'm just saying they didn't make the top list.

So, that was definitely one of them. I think biofuel was another one. The numbers don't report that one iota. And we were surprised. We thought, well ... We didn't think it would be high, but we think it would be a contribution. Zero. Neutral. Zero at best, by the way.

3p: Most of the businesses we work with, when they think about their own climate impact, they'll do some energy efficiency or water conservation, but at the end of the day they're probably going to buy carbon offsets to even things out.  After doing all of this work, where would you recommend companies spend their impact budgets?  Is the direct approach of offsets still the best, or do you think it's better spent on investing on some of these technologies and supporting the larger drawdown efforts in a more indirect way?

PH: Offsets are a result of the simplification of the problem. That's the idea of if we get the energy thing right, we get a hall pass to the 22nd century. Also, it's centralizable, measurable, and therefore it's more doable than other solutions, you know. Like packaging and how the employees get their work in the first place.

So, I just think it's everything, you know, corporate literacy comes in waves, then there's a change. Then also costs go down, which makes a big difference, you know, for procurement.

The advantage of the solutions we cover in Drawdown is that, economically, they are just accelerating. The cost of the problem used to be cheaper than the cost of the solution. Very much so.

I think we've crossed a watershed where that is no longer true in many cases and the "business case" for basically stealing the future and selling it in the present with GDP is evaporating. The business case, it's not even triple bottom line. It's bottom line case. For businesses, it's going to be to heal the future, not to steal it, and to restore, not to deteriorate, to generate, not to degenerate.

***

While the book is already published, the work is just beginning. The "Drawdown" team has plans to make all their data available to the public for further research and analysis. You can find out more here.

Image credits: Drawdown, TriplePundit

Estimates suggest the number of Syrian refugees worldwide has passed the 5 million mark, with over 650,000 in Jordan alone. And the discussion over where these displaced citizens will go overlooks the general outcome: Migrants, including refugees, create a net positive impact for communities worldwide.

Recent surveys, as well as studies completed over the past several decades, corroborate the evidence that has long been visible in American communities. Take a look at the 100-plus year history of the Armenian community in Fresno, California, and in recent years, the Hmong; Bosnians who fled the 1990s civil war and relocated to St. Louis; Vietnamese in cities such as San Jose and Houston; or the Haitians and Cubans in Miami. The data suggests that while refugees often face hiccups when they first move to a new land, overall they have a leading role in revitalizing communities and catalyzing economic growth.

As Karen Coates, a journalism fellow at Brandeis University, acknowledged in a recent article, there are some caveats to the conclusions that refugees bring far more to new communities than what they take away. A sudden influx of a million refugees in Germany creates plenty of challenges; that same amount of refugees in a country with its own struggles, including Middle East states such as Lebanon and Jordan, can spark a crisis.

But as the global consultancy McKinsey concluded, refugees can generate an economic boost when they migrate to more developed countries – where at least half of the world’s refugees have resettled in recent years.

Whether migrants move voluntarily or leave political chaos and violence, the statistics are difficult to deny. McKinsey’s researchers concluded that while they comprise 3.4 percent of the world’s population, migrants contribute 10 percent to global GDP. Lower-skilled workers free up established citizens to embark upon higher-value work, and they contribute to society with their own innovation or entrepreneurship. In 2015, that resulted in an additional $6.7 trillion to global GDP.

One microeconomic example is how refugees’ economic impact can be seen in the upstate New York rust belt city of Utica. At one time, the city was an economic powerhouse in its own right. Its network of canals and railroads eventually fostered industries such as textiles, munitions, furniture and electronics. But during the second half of the 20th century, the city’s manufacturing sector lurched into a rapid free-fall, dragging the regional economy down with it.

But in recent years, data suggests the approximate 15,000 refugees who resettled in Utica have provided more than their fair share of economic revitalization. The city’s population has begun to grow again. And, as is the case in many cities and towns, these immigrants have become 30 percent more likely to start new businesses.

In an Associated Press interview earlier this year, the city’s mayor, Robert Palmieri, suggested that those critical of refugee resettlement programs should visit Utica and see the difference.

Noting that Bosnians have refurbished old homes and Somalis have opened businesses in the city’s core, Palmeiri urged leaders to visit his city and learn about immigration's impact, saying: “See what it’s all about and how beneficial it’s been as a melting pot and blending [refugees] into the fiber of America.”

Image credit: Andy V./Flickr

Bangalore (officially called Bangaluru) has become the enduring symbol of the economic transformation that makes India the envy of much of the developing and developed worlds. Its population and economy accelerated as just about every global information technology has set up operations in this city of 8.4 million people.

But the influx of people and investment came with a price: an uncertain water supply. Perched on a plateau 3,000 feet above sea level, the city has a complicated system of storage lakes and infrastructure necessary to haul water from a river located over 50 miles away. But those systems have not been able to keep pace with Bangalore’s dizzying growth.

“Neglect, not surprisingly, gave rise to scarcity,” wrote Samanth Subramanian in his profile of the city’s water crisis on Wired.

The result is, at best, a Wild West of water delivery systems that are run by syndicates that adopt tactics typical of any big-city mafia, which Subramanian vividly described in his report. At worst, Bangalore’s failure to grasp the impact that overheated development would have on its water security forecasts a future that some say could become apocalyptic.

Bangalore once brimmed with hundreds of manmade lakes, many of them several centuries old, but the vast majority have been lost; the few dozen left are often strewn with sewage and, as portrayed in the Guardian earlier this year, some have even caught fire.

One local civil engineer, P.N. Ravindra, suggested that Bangalore could become uninhabitable by 2020. He later backed away from that conclusion, but other experts have made similar claims.

The stubborn truth is that the city’s attractiveness to future investors is largely in doubt as Bangalore’s leaders struggle to find new sources of water to keep its ultramodern office parks and shiny residential developments hydrated for the near term.

Meanwhile, the state of which Bangalore is the capital, Karnataka, is mired in a miserable drought -- exacerbating the region’s precarious water security. Businesses that rely on steady precipitation, such as local flower growers, have seen their revenues dry up as the state confronts its worst precipitation levels in over 40 years.

Local press accounts are brimming with reports of huge price increases for food, a trend that could lead to more social instability if Bangalore cannot get a handle on delivering a steady supply of water to homes and businesses.

If there is one silver lining in what has become a nightmare for Bangalore’s business leaders and politicians, residents are becoming more aware of their fundamental right to safe access to water.

National and local laws across India often require certain establishments such as restaurants and bus stations to provide free and clean drinking water to patrons. But one patron at a local KFC alleged last year that the restaurant refused to provide drinking water, even though she purchased a meal. She sued KFC for 1 rupee (16 cents), stating that the company had denied her a fundamental right mandated by Indian law. KFC claimed that it freely provided water to the customer, but could not verify that fact with any evidence, including video feed. The company said the citizen was only litigating to cover the cost of her meal, but the court noted she only sued for that one single rupee. And last month, she won her court case.

In the meantime, stories like this highlight the struggles many of Bangalore’s citizens now face due to water shortages and increased fees for a most vital resource.

Image credit: Eirik Refsdal/Flickr

By Bob Keener

For stability and growth, our market economy needs laws and regulations to foster broad-based prosperity and long-term resilience -- in a word, sustainability. Now more than ever, business leaders must stand together and tell lawmakers that “what business wants” are policies that fully account for any enterprise’s costs (or “externalities”) to people and our planet. Here are three important policy initiatives for business to support now:

1. Support single-payer healthcare

The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) has greatly increased the number of Americans with health insurance, but millions are still uninsured, at serious cost to productivity and public health.

Costs to business of the inefficient U.S. system have increased 250 percent over the last 15 years. Republicans’ recent alternative, the American Health Care Act, would have insured fewer Americans while giving more money directly to insurance companies and drug manufacturers; another idea would remove essential Obamacare provisions like coverage for preexisting conditions.

To stop both ever-escalating costs and de facto rationing, we need single-payer healthcare.

What’s at stake: Health insurance companies are enormously profitable and politically powerful, and our current system increases their profits at most other companies’ expense. More than 20 percent of the premiums employers pay insurance companies -- $300 million to 400 million every year --  is wasted on administrative costs.

Single-payer healthcare -- publicly financed but privately delivered -- would streamline the system, efficiently improve healthcare for all Americans, and save billions of dollars through negotiated prices and reduced waste.

What you can do: With health insurance costs to business at 18 percent of GDP, it’s time policymakers hear from firms outside the insurance industry. Business Leaders Transforming Healthcare offers business a voice for reform. Sign up and see how your business can support a transparent, evidence-based healthcare system that works.

2. Defend smart regulations

The Donald Trump administration and GOP-controlled Congress are joining old-line lobbyists to kill regulations that protect our environment, our workplace safety and our financial system's integrity -- ironically, in the name of “accountability.” With pro-corporation Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, responsible businesses are at even greater risk.

What’s at stake: Smart regulations now under fire are essential to our market economy. ASBC board chair Frank Knapp, president and CEO of the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce, recently testified before the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship that companies want smart regulations (view video). These rules keep big firms from foisting their costs onto smaller companies and taxpayers, let the market choose winners fairly, reward healthy innovation, and give companies of all sizes a chance to grow. 

What you can do: Lobbyists find it useful to push the idea that all businesses hate all regulation; and policymakers seldom question that stereotype. Let government know that broadly-shared prosperity, our market economy and democracy itself depend on fair regulation. Join fellow business leaders to oppose the so-called Regulatory Accountability Act.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-il9H4IHnAc

3. Encourage pay equity

The Equal Pay Law of 1963 made it illegal to pay women lower rates than men for the same job. At that time, women were paid 59 percent of men’s wages. By 2000, women were still paid only 74 percent of men’s wages (even less for women of color).

The 2009 Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act prohibited gender-based discrimination and let women fight back regardless of when workplace discrimination began. But in 2017, women still must work an average of 16 months to earn what the average white man is paid in 12 months.

What’s at stake: Progress, always slow, is threatened outright today. In March 2017, President Trump pulled back the 2014 Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order put in place by President Barack Obama to protect women on the job.

And the usual organizations have tried to retard progress in the name of business. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently asked the White House Office of Management and Budget to block last year’s EEOC initiative to collect pay data on employees by race and gender, an important diagnostic that helps enforce laws against pay discrimination and helps employers self-evaluate for workforce pay gaps.

Business support for pay equity policy is essential to level the playing field for ethical companies as well as for valuable workers.

What you can do: Stay alert to attacks on progress and meanwhile, take action: Endorse these Principles of High Road Employers to show your support for equal pay and other high-road business practices.

Image credit: Flickr/Roman Boed

Bob Keener is Deputy Director of Public Relations for the American Sustainable Business Council.