Wayne Visser > Quotes

“capital flows to wherever the social or environmental standards are lowest. Not only this, but capitalism is designed to create the instability that we have seen in the markets, and those that suffer the most from this volatility are always the most vulnerable, namely the poor of the world.”
― Wayne Visser, The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business

“Responsibility is literally what it says – our ability to respond. It is a choice we make – whether to be attentive to our children’s needs, whether to be mindful of the plight of those less fortunate, whether to be considerate of the impact we have on the earth and others. To be responsible is to be proactive in the world, to be sensitive to the interconnections, and to be willing to do something constructive, as a way of giving back.”
― Wayne Visser, The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business

“CSR is the way in which business consistently creates shared value in society through economic development, good governance, stakeholder responsiveness and environmental improvement. Put another way, CSR is an integrated, systemic approach by business that builds, rather than erodes or destroys, economic, social, human and natural capital.”
― Wayne Visser, The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business

“Another way of phrasing the question is: Are the technology innovations appropriate to the context where solutions to our social and environmental challenges are most needed?”
― Wayne Visser, Thriving: The Breakthrough Movement to Regenerate Nature, Society, and the Economy

“change is no longer a matter of choice. Our present trajectory tells us it’s coming whether we want it to or not. The only question is what form this change is going to take.”
― Wayne Visser, The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business

“Responsibility is the choice we make to respond with care.”
― Wayne Visser, The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business

“The number of people who are undernourished has continued to grow, while slow progress in reducing the prevalence of hunger stalled – or even reversed itself – in the first decade of the century.”
― Wayne Visser, The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business

“CSR will no longer manifest as luxury products and services (as with current green and fairtrade options), but as affordable solutions for those who most need quality of life improvements.”
― Wayne Visser, The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business

“We seem to be trapped in a world of myopic short-termism, driven by a capitalist system that is obsessed with quarterly returns for absent shareholders. According to McKinsey research, this does not even make economic sense. Their 15-year analysis of short-term- versus long-term-oriented companies found the long-term firms showed 47 percent more revenue growth and 36 percent more earnings, had $7 billion more market capitalization growth and a higher total return to shareholders, and led to the creation of 12,000 more jobs. One distinguishing feature is that long-term companies invest almost 50 percent more in research and development, including during financial crises. It is time companies challenged quarterly capitalism and focused on long-term value creation.27 According to the former managing director”
― Wayne Visser, Thriving: The Breakthrough Movement to Regenerate Nature, Society, and the Economy

“business as the only force in today’s world that’s got it all: a universal presence, an ability to get things done quickly and on as little as a CEO’s say-so, and the economic clout required to engineer widespread systemic change with remarkable speed.”
― Wayne Visser, The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business

“The most recent 100-year linear trend shows a 0.74°C increase in temperature in the century to 2005 (which is larger than the 100-year trend of 0.6°C reported in 2001).”
― Wayne Visser, The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business

“the search for solutions, data scientists are studying how DNA packs information so tightly. It’s a mind-boggling fact that if we managed to copy the data-storage technique used by our DNA, we could store all the internet’s data on a device the size of a shoebox.”
― Wayne Visser, Thriving: The Breakthrough Movement to Regenerate Nature, Society, and the Economy

“Responsibility is not a guarantee of success, but a commitment to trying.”
― Wayne Visser, The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business

“sustainability can be conceived as the destination – the challenges, vision, strategy and goals, i.e. what we are aiming for, while responsibility is more about the journey – our solutions, responses, management and actions, i.e. how we get there.”
― Wayne Visser, The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business

“If we enjoy the right to freedom, it is because we accept our responsibility not to harm or harass others. If we expect the right to fair treatment, we have a responsibility to respect the rule of law and honour the principle of reciprocity.”
― Wayne Visser, The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business

“In sum, the most commonly used stock and bond market benchmark indexes cause economic harm, distort pricing information, and cause financial behaviours that are inimical with the EU’s aspirations for a competitive low carbon economy.”
― Wayne Visser, Disrupting the Future: Great Ideas for Creating a Much Better World

“We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities. —Bill Maher”
― Wayne Visser, The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business

“solving these complex social, environmental and ethical problems is not the mandate of CSR, nor within its capacity to achieve. My response is that while business certainly cannot tackle our global challenges alone, unless CSR is actually about solving the problems and reversing the negative trends, what is the point? CSR then becomes little more than an altruistic conscience-easer at best; a manipulative image-management tool at worst.”
― Wayne Visser, The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business

“The first industrial revolution is flawed. It is not working. It is unsustainable. It is a mistake and we must move on to another and better industrial revolution and get it right this time. —Ray Anderson”
― Wayne Visser, The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business

“We can learn lessons from the antiplastics movement. It started with nonprofits complaining but having no real impact. Business and government were content to make superficial responses (such as litter-education campaigns). Meanwhile, the science was building. But it took entrepreneurship (notably Boyan Slat with Ocean Cleanup) and media (numerous documentaries, including Drowning in Plastic, A Plastic Ocean, and Plastic Is Forever) to trigger consumer and public pressure. Legislation followed (plastic-bag bans, the EU plastics strategy, and the Basel Convention changes). Now we get serious innovation, investment, and change.”
― Wayne Visser, Thriving: The Breakthrough Movement to Regenerate Nature, Society, and the Economy

“Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. —Albert Szent-Györgyi”
― Wayne Visser, The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business