Welcome to e4sw.org

Stuart L. Hart - ESW President & Co-Founder

At Enterprise for a Sustainable World, we take the view that business--more than either government or civil society--is uniquely equipped at this point in history to lead us toward a sustainable world in the years ahead. Indeed, companies are the only entities in the world today with the technology, resources, capacity, and global reach required. Properly focused, the profit motive can accelerate (not inhibit) the transformation toward global sustainability, with nonprofits, governments, and multilateral agencies all playing crucial roles as collaborators.

We foresee massive opportunities for companies both to make money and to make the world a better place, particularly among the four billion poor at the base of the economic pyramid. ESW is therefore focused on action research, education, and organizational change for corporations (as well as governments and NGOs) interested in transformation toward sustainability. Driven by an accelerating rate of technological change and the growing realization that something fundamental must change if we are to accommodate a population of 8 billion to 10 billion human beings on the planet, ESW is geared toward reorientation rather than just incremental adjustment to current products and processes. We believe that leapfrogging to inherently clean technologies through disruptive business models at the base of the pyramid can enable companies to confront directly the two biggest problems facing humanity: poverty and global-scale environmental degradation. These also provide the basis for the repositioning and growth that will be needed for companies to thrive in the future.