From its inception, The Future 500 has been a hybrid organization.
- A visionary not-for-profit, with practical business skills, respected and trusted by corporate and NGO leaders alike.
- A mission-driven organization that applies natural systems principles to leverage the financial and organizational resources of the world's largest companies.
The Beginning…
In December 1995, leaders from some of the world's largest Fortune 500 companies met in Aspen, Colorado, to consider the future of business.
From that meeting emerged The Future 500, a global network of corporate leaders devoted to developing companies that could sustain themselves, and the stakeholders they serve, well into the future. Co-founded by William K. Shireman and Tachi Kiuchi, headquarters offices were set up in California and Japan.
The unique niche served by The Future 500 - the field we both pioneered and continue to lead - is Corporate Stakeholder Engagement, the process by which companies and their stakeholders work together to advance their mutual needs.
Through our stakeholder engagement tools and systems, we have been privileged to trigger major Triple Bottom Line gains at many of the world's largest and most influential companies.
One reason for our success is that we take a strategic, systems-based approach, to unite the interests of corporate shareholders and stakeholders. Harnessing feedback-and-adaptation to drive both shareholder and stakeholder interests, our programs create self-reinforcing processes that foster continuous gains.
For example...
Our staff crafted California's innovative "Bottle Bill" - documented to be the most cost-effective in the world - using economic incentives to drive the recycling of 100 billion beverage containers, and Counting.
We forged a partnership between Mitsubishi companies and the Rainforest Action Network, and developed simple, practical procurement specifications, now adopted by over 400 companies, to save over four million acres of Old Growth forest.
Our stakeholder process between Weyerhaeuser Canada (MacMillan-Bloedel), Greenpeace, Sierra Club, and RAN led to an innovative approach to forest management that all sides could support, and the "biggest step forward in North American forest protection in 17 years."
Our stakeholder projects for Alcoa, Chevron, Clorox, Coors, Procter & Gamble, and others led to better-designed Green Products and more effective Market-Based Alternatives to Command-and-Control Regulation, winning larger sustained market shares.
Through these efforts, we developed the Future 500 System for Stakeholder Engagement, which has improved shareholder and stakeholder performance at such brand-name enterprises as Coca-Cola, Coors, General Motors, Mitsubishi, Nike, and Procter & Gamble, among others.
In 2001, to address growing corporate accountability challenges and needs, we formed the Future 500 CAP Alliance. Through this alliance, firms such as ARCADIS, ERM, Ecos, MS&L, and WSP provides expert guidance and assistance to companies worldwide on wide ranging corporate needs related to corporate accountability, quality, ethics, responsibility, sustainability, crisis management, or other matters related to stakeholder performance and engagement.
In 2002, we developed the first generation of our CAP Gap Audit - a software-driven process that consolidates 17 corporate accountability standards in one simple tool and is now being deployed globally at numerous companies and corporate subsidiaries.
Our study of computer recycling policy options helped lead to breakthrough legislation in California in 2003. Senate Bill 20 created the first statewide system of fees to drive computer recycling.
Ultimately, we are proud that our specific stakeholder initiatives have generated documented savings in excess of 3.25 billion, while protecting the environment, recycling resources, and benefiting people.
If you wish to learn more about our methods, many of them are documented in our book, What We Learned in the Rainforest - Business Lessons from Nature
