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Samuel C. Johnson '50: Great businesses that are also "good"
(from the Philanthropy Report 2003-04)
Sam Johnson, who passed away at his home in Racine, Wisconsin, in May 2004, was not only a longtime patron and friend of the Johnson School, but also a guiding force and inspiration in its development. The Johnson family's landmark $20 million gift in 1984, at the time the largest ever bestowed upon a business school, spearheaded a massive capital campaign that transformed Sage Hall, gave the school its current name and helped the Johnson School become one of the top general-management schools in the United States.
Johnson has always been a model for the type of leaders that the Johnson School seeks to produce: dynamic, innovative, wise individuals who inspire their employees to greatness, raise the standards for others in the business world and transform their organizations into truly sustainable businesses.
Johnson, who took over the family-owned S.C. Johnson company in 1966, increased sales from $171 million to more than $9 billion annually. Johnson created this wealth, however, not by focusing solely on the financial bottom line. Behind the company's monetary success lies its commitment to environmental stewardship and the communities in which it operates. Johnson was one of the pioneers of sustainable development and made that issue a focus throughout his career. This legacy remains one of the touchstones of the Johnson School.
Several years ago, Johnson endowed the Samuel C. Johnson Professor in Sustainable Global Enterprise, a position held by Stuart L. Hart, who is acknowledged to be the leading scholar in sustainable business. A dynamic, highly visible and influential thought leader, Hart is actively bringing together many units and disciplines across the Cornell campus to build the Johnson School's Center in Sustainable Global Enterprise (CSGE).
Johnson's recent gift of $5 million supports the Johnson School's growing program in global sustainable business, which emphasizes the values that Johnson exemplified throughout his life. With its rich variety of disciplines and seemingly limitless intellectual capital, Cornell affords a rare opportunity for multifaceted research and practice in sustainable business. "There are tremendous potential synergies with other programs at Cornell that will help to make our Center truly unique and exceptional," says Hart.
For example, Johnson School MBA students have teamed with students from the College of Engineering, College of Architecture, Department of City and Regional Planning, College of Human Ecology, Department of Natural Resources and other units to participate in the U.S. Department of Energy's 2004-2005 Solar Decathlon competition, which charges university teams to design and build fully self-sufficient homes. The Johnson School students have pledged to design a building that can be constructed less expensively than a conventional house, and plan to commercialize new technologies from the project.
An emergent, collaborative program among the Johnson School, the College of Engineering and the College of Life and Agricultural Sciences promises to be unlike anything offered by other business schools. The program involves studying clean technologies and encouraging new-venture development at the "Base of the Pyramid" (BOP) - the underprivileged, impoverished societies of the world. "We're trying to hear the voices of the four billion people that have been excluded," explains Hart.
Two executives in residence will advise the program: Gordon Enk, a prominent business consultant and former International Paper executive, and Emeka Nwankwo, a Nigerian PhD research engineer from DuPont, who taught a new course in spring 2004, "New Venture Development for the Base of the Pyramid." In addition to a large grant from the National Science Foundation, the BOP program has gained funding from corporations, including DuPont, S.C. Johnson, Hewlett-Packard, and Tetrapak. The program is cosponsored by the University of North Carolina, the University of Michigan, and the World Resources Institute.
Another potentially groundbreaking CSGE effort involves studying leadership and human-resources challenges for sustainable enterprise. This program, a collaborative effort with the School of Industrial and Labor Relations and its Center for Advanced Human Resources Studies, is advised by Paul Tebo, DuPont's former senior vice president for sustainability. "The international organizational challenges associated with sustainable global enterprise are a significantly understudied area, and Cornell can make a significant mark in this important space," explains Hart.
Yet another exciting program is a joint effort with the school's Parker Center to study investment research in sustainability. The program benefits greatly from corporate partner Innovest Strategic Value Advisors, an investment research firm that analyzes companies' environmental, social and strategic governance practices as well as market performance. The idea behind this program, says Hart, is to study companies' management practices in terms of sustainability principles as a predictor of return on investment - a vastly different approach than traditional "social equity" mutual funds, which simply exclude companies in particular industries, such as tobacco or uranium mining. "Rather than investing in vehicles that give you lower returns, but let you sleep at night, we will be trying to build portfolios that outperform," explains Hart.
In addition to Enk and Tebo, Hart has brought other key individuals on board to grow the CSGE: Acting Managing CSGE Director Jon Greene '04, and Mark Milstein, who is co-principal investigator for the National Science Foundation grant for the BOP project. Milstein will also be collaborating with Hart to expand the current seven-week class in sustainable global enterprise to a full semester.
Hart, whose former leadership at the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School helped propel that school to the forefront of sustainable enterprise, says that his mission at the Johnson School benefits not only from the unparalleled resources of Cornell, but also from the tremendously broad-based support he is receiving.
"This is the first situation I've experienced where all the arrows line up: The major donor for the program - the Johnson family - is also the major donor for the school and a huge donor for the university, the Dean is very enthusiastic and on board, and President Lehman is very aligned with this idea," says Hart. "We're getting people excited about making the world a better place, and doing it through a commercial model."
