An evening at Buckingham Palace!

I have just returned after attending the aforementioned reception at Buckingham Palace but I still have not been able to track down who recommended my name. Well, I am not complaining - it was awesome inside the palace! And, I got to see the Queen in real life from about a metre, and even got a chance to speak to the Duke of Edinburgh. It was a bit difficult to speak to the Queen as Her Majesty was being shepherded around to meet key exhibitors and high flyers (guess my turn will come someday! :-)). Nonetheless, it was a wonderful evening and a wonderful experience. It was a reception full of some really prominent personalities...Prof. Pillinger (of the Beagle 2 Marslander project), Stephen Hawking (the Cambridge Physicist), Lord Browne (of BP to whom I also spoke briefly), and moi! Yes, me! :-) Just kidding...I probably got the invite by mistake. The reception was followed by a sumptuous dinner hosted by the Royal Society for a select few, where I got introduced to a few more heads of this and that - this and that being some of the top organisations in the UK. Unfortunately, as much as I would like to show you some pictures, we were not allowed to take any inside so all I have to show for my reception at Buckingham Palace are the pictures below (which any tourist could take too!). Well, well, we can't have everything in life! :-)




Buckingham Palace is now lighted using energy efficient LEDs which were turned on for the first time on the evening of our reception.

SD, CSR and hey, will I meet the Queen?

Got to work this morning and found a very pleasant surprise in the pigeon hole. A gold lined card from the Palace, written by the Master of the Household at Her Majesty's command inviting moi to attend a reception au Palais! I am thrilled! Excited! And, curious as to how this happened? How did She know? It is not until late October so I have got time to find out...and enough time to arrange my trip to the City! :-)

OK, enough of this! What I really meant to do was discuss Sustainable Development and Corporate Social Responsibility. What do these terms mean? Are they just some fluffy corporate terms that sound great but mean nothing? Or, do they actually imply something? And, if so, what?

Our common future, the document that came out of the United Nation World Commission on Environment and Development, written under the leadership of former Norwegian Prime Minister Dr. Brundtland, defines Sustainable Development as development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". But, could this not mean anything? What I like to do is to imagine it as a three legged table where one leg represents economy, the second society and the third environment. And together, they keep the table standing. Or, SD could also be thought of as three circles (environment, society and economy) overlapping...and the overlap represents sustainable development. Sounds fluffy? We see these circles all around us every day - we just have to get the balance right.

What about CSR? Well, it is the corporate world's way of approaching not just SD but also encompassing a much broader aspect of development, that of its sorrounding communities, environment, society but always ensuring that business is profitable. One has to be pragmatic in approaching the issue as a business that is not profitable is unlikely to find the resources to focus on environmental and social development.

However, CSR cannot be ignored. In today's complex world of multinational supply chains and supranational business transactions, a company can easily slip up and miss a key point that can bite hard when it is uncovered. Remember Syngenta and child labour in India, Coca-Cola and the University of Michigan, Gap in El Salvador, Shell in Nigeria, and yes, Enron?

So, the message is simple: don't ignore SD and CSR but be pragmatic - approach it sensibly and maintain the balance.