The Social Impact and Sustainability Imperatives Facing Leaders
Now more than ever, businesses must serve all stakeholders—customers, employees, society, and investors—alike. At BCG, we believe in the power of business and capital to be forces for good. We work with our clients to analyze their core business models, capabilities, and operations to create positive economic, social, and environmental impact in ways that are profitable for the long term.
Our Social Impact and Sustainability Focus Areas
Sustainable Finance & Investing
Food Systems and Security
We achieve our greatest societal impact in collaboration with our clients. By maximizing the impact of these cooperative efforts, we accomplish far more than we ever could alone. Partnership is at the heart of our social impact approach, and it is key to tackling complex social and environmental challenges. We seek to maximize our own social impact by enriching and expanding our partnerships, fostering system-level coalitions, and establishing social impact and sustainability as core competencies that are woven into business strategies and thus yield quantifiable returns.
Our social impact consulting drives major initiatives across a broad spectrum of global challenges to shape a better future. Our work is closely aligned with addressing and achieving the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Meet Our Social Impact and Sustainability Leaders and Consultants
David Young: La optimización del valor social y empresarial durante la pandemia de COVID-19
David Young, líder global de Impacto Social Total y Sostenibilidad en BCG, comparte su perspectiva sobre cómo la optimización del valor social y empresarial desempeñarán un papel crucial para las empresas e inversionistas que buscan emerger y crecer durante la pandemia de COVID-19, en Latino América y en el mundo. El negocio necesita de una base fundamental de toma de decisiones gerenciales, respaldada por una mejor ecuación para el valor corporativo, que va mucho más allá de ofrecer un resultado financiero y un flujo de dividendos estables.
BCG: Partnering for Sustainable Development Goals
No one organization or sector can successfully solve the complex societal challenges we face today. Reaching the UN's Sustainable Development Goals requires collaboration across the public, private, and social sectors.
Examples of Our Social Impact Consulting
In this time of accelerating systematic change, customers, employees, and investors increasingly demand that organizations act in socially aware and sustainable ways and demonstrate that they are doing so. It is necessary, strategic, and profitable for organizations to have a positive social impact. We help organizations to plan, implement, assess, and communicate their social impact and sustainability initiatives. Examples of our social impact work include:
Climate Change. BCG's Center for Climate Action partnered with OGCI Climate Investments to maximize the impact of OGCI's $1 billion climate fund.
Economic Development. We joined forces with the Rwanda Development Board to help the country attract private investors to create new jobs. As a direct result, more than $130 million was invested and 9,000 jobs were created; an additional 20,000 jobs were created indirectly.
Global Education. We supported the Indian state of Haryana as they quickly and sustainably boosted the quality of education for millions of students.
Humanitarian Response. Collaborated with the World Economic Forum to develop an ecosystem for humanitarian and resilience investing, building an "opportunity platform" for tracking the size and nature of the humanitarian investing market. The platform already indicates thousands of projects in the works, collectively worth billions of dollars.
Public Health. We created three principles to guide Africa's COVID-19 response, based on our work supporting COVID-19 responses around the world and our broad range of support for governments in Africa.
Sustainability. We partnered with Higg Co and Sustainable Apparel Coalition to create actionable guidance for fashion companies to accelerate their sustainability agendas, positioning themselves to be competitive in a post-pandemic market.
Transformative global change for the better is clearly possible. Driving such change is a source of sustainable competitive advantage. Companies can do well by doing good. For instance, biopharma companies that conduct ethical human clinical trials and expand access to medications have margins that are 6.7 percentage points higher, and valuations that are 12% greater, than the average for the industry.
Meet Our Global Social Impact Partnerships
We partner with leading organizations to mobilize shared expertise and to develop their organizational strengths toward solving some of the world's most pressing challenges.
Learn more about our global social impact partners
Explore Our Latest Thinking on Social Impact and Sustainability
BCG 2019 Making a Difference Report
Our Annual Sustainability Report details the steps we have taken—both through our client work and through the transformation of our own operations—to address important societal and environmental challenges in 2019 and to help shape a brighter future.
Reducing exposure among those who are vulnerable to adverse health outcomes will benefit the healthy, the economically vulnerable, and society overall.
The Time for Global Climate Action Is Now
Combating climate change is one of humanity's defining challenges of the 2020s. BCG's Center for Climate Action partners with businesses and governments to help them prepare for a decarbonized world, supporting them as they drive technological and economic transformations and realize competitive advantage in a low-carbon economy.
BCG on Social Impact
Follow BCG on Social Impact on LinkedIn to explore how organizations are advancing the SDGs and how the growth of your business can benefit society.
Read more of our latest thinking on social impact and sustainability
Next Section: Latest Thinking
Our Latest Thinking on Social Impact and Sustainability
Subscribe to our Social Impact eAlert.