Executives are reimagining the value of nonfinancial assets for their own companies, the broader industry, and the environment by making product development more design- and information-intensive. The result: new digitally enhanced offerings that are reducing material use, lowering energy demands, and increasing revenues.

Each month, the MIT SMR Strategy Forum poses a single question to our panel of experts in the fields of business, economics, and management. This month’s question asks our panel whether industry self-regulation can help mitigate climate change.

It’s possible that humankind has created complex, systemic problems that exceed our human capacity to solve them. Some companies, particularly the tech giants, are recognizing this possibility and looking to AI as a tool for solving environmental and social problems. One of these companies is Microsoft. In December 2017, it committed $50 million to its new “AI for Earth” program to fund innovators who are making progress in four critical areas — climate change, water, agriculture, and biodiversity.

Now available in the MIT SMR archive: video of last spring’s chat about sustainable product lifecycles with Wood Turner of Stonyfield Farm and Peter Graf of SAP, moderated by Jason Jay of the MIT Sloan School of Management.

As vice president for sustainability at Kraft Foods, Chris McGrath has been pivotal at guiding the company’s sustainability efforts. With its global reach and massive market shares, the company is setting new standards on how to source through sustainable agriculture and keep packaging out of landfills.

Food packaging manufacturer Tetra Pak says it will develop packaging material based on 100 per cent renewable materials.

Energy sector innovation faces an important hurdle, according to MIT’s Ernest Moniz. How do we reconcile the cultural mismatch between innovators and the establishment?

As SAP’s first-ever chief sustainability officer, Peter Graf was prepared to lay out the business case for sustainability to stakeholders and customers of every kind. But he had to make the case to SAP’s own board of directors first.

The director of the MIT Energy Initiative explains why blending big-company culture with entrepreneurial innovation is the challenge that leaders must learn to meet.

Supply chain executives are uniquely positioned to be able to see the whole ecology of a firm’s business, because they’re so close to all the pieces. This is especially true when it comes to matters of sustainability. This interview with Edgar Blanco, Research Director at the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics, outlines the areas in which supply chain managers can immediately have a sustainability impact, including packaging, transportation, supplier engagement, and customer alignment.

Even corporations with clear environmental aims fail to go the distance when it comes to their supply chains. But lessons from a small group of Fortune 500 companies can give them the direction they need.

The bleak labor market facing finance professionals may create an unexpected opportunity — for environmental sustainability efforts.

There’s a big—and getting bigger—public discussion about sustainability, but it’s not the one managers need. Here are some early findings from a different kind of inquiry.

Sign of the times: In a wide-ranging speech on energy policy, a leading U.S. energy executive discusses the need to place some type of price on carbon dioxide emissions.