The companies offered real projects which the students will be working on throughout the semester. While very different in nature, all three projects address critical aspects of environmental sustainability strategies pursued by companies today:

• As a consumer-facing business and the fourth-largest footwear brand worldwide, New Balance is interested in the emerging policies and practices for developing and implementing green labels and eco-indexes. While green labeling regulation is pending in Europe, most efforts in the United States have been driven by voluntary initiatives. At the same time, governments, NGOs and consumers are concerned about green washing. What is the best strategy going forward for a global company like New Balance?

• In order to manage its environmental impacts and respond to stakeholders, PerkinElmer – a global biotechnology firm – measures and reports on its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Using World Resource Institute’s GHG Protocol, the company has successfully measured and reported its Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. Next it plans to focus on its Scope 3 emissions and how these can be reduced by switching from air to ocean freight for its product distribution. Such a strategy has a strong business case but data collection can be challenging. Working with the logistics team, students will map out the process for data collection and calculate the reductions in GHG emissions from such a change in product transportation.

• Well known in North America for its life insurance, investment and other financial services, John Hancock, part of Manulife Financial, prints and mails more than 1 billion pages of customer documents annually. It has already made the decision to implement an eDelivery system in 2011 in order to cut both costs and environmental impacts, but the success of such a strategy depends on the customer acceptance of electronic delivery of documents. What makes an eDelivery strategy successful and what are the best ways to implement it? These are some of the questions that the students will seek to answer as well as estimate the costs savings from eDelivery.

Collaboration between business schools and companies has clear benefits for both sides. Students develop practical knowledge and problem-solving skills in a new but fast-growing area of business management, and at the same time learn about prospects for internships and jobs. Companies get the opportunity to “pick the brains” of young, smart people and obtain new ideas. They also get access to top talent for their recruitment efforts. While few sustainability or CSR jobs are available to MBA graduates, having such experience is a plus when seeking employment at leading companies such as Intel, Dow Chemical, or Campbell Soup, among others (see Alina Dizik’s March 4, 2010,story in the Wall Street Journal – Sustainability is a Growing Theme). This trend is only expected to accelerate as population growth, resource depletion, and stakeholder pressures bring new social and environmental challenges to business management in the future.

Cheryl Kiser, managing director of Babson College’s Lewis Initiative, opened the panel with the recent discovery of a worrying trend:

For over 25 years, corporate philanthropy professionals had indicated that their #1 funding and volunteer priority was education. In the last two years, however, Cheryl noticed in surveys of the field that in general corporate philanthropy departments were suffering from what she called the “3 F’s”: They were Frustrated, they felt Fatigued, and they worried that they had Failed in their attempts to truly invest in educational systems and drive progress.

The purpose of this session, then, was to leverage what Cheryl called “The Uncommon Table” – in essence a platform in which participants could go beyond the static idea-sharing common within homogenous sectors or industries and instead participate in “uncommon conversations with unusual suspects.” After all, she reasoned, “no one company can go it alone.”

To do this, Cheryl was joined a group of highly knowledgeable panelists:

• Linda A. Pittenger, consultant, Council of Chief State School Officers
• Lydia M. Logan, executive director, Institute for a Competitive Workforce
• Suzanne Immerman, special assistant to the secretary/director of Philanthropic Engagement, U.S. Department of Education

Together, Cheryl and the panelists opened themselves up to questions from the audience in what was an informal and informative discussion on the state of the U.S. education system and how corporate funders can get involved. A few takeaways are worth sharing:

One attendee asked a question that seemed to resonate throughout the room: “If we’re supposed to help fix American education, shouldn’t we know (and agree on) what’s broken?” While all panelists had opinions on just what’s wrong, Suzanne from the Department of Education boiled it down to four problem areas:

1. Human Capital (both supporting educators and administrators, as well as making school relevant to students);
2. Information and data systems (to track, measure, and strategize);
3. Different state standards and assessment tools to tracking student performance
4. Low performing schools that consistently underperform without being reformed.

Interestingly, one panelist suggested that in order to tackle these problems, business should look at its core competencies and the areas in which it has the most credibility. Many of the areas in which business excels – management training, information systems, data analysis – are the areas that schools need the most help with. Given this, Lydia encouraged the audience to consider how their corporate investments in education were aligned with these four areas – if they’re not aligned, she suggested, companies would do well to refocus.

Other relevant conversation points included how companies can drive innovation through partnerships and grant proposals with the Department of Education (who, by the way, is putting an incredible amount of stimulus funding innovation and reform in education), as well as what other countries are doing to support their educational systems as they grow, develop, and eventually surpass the U.S. in the rankings.

In all, the session provided a thoughtful look at the multiple, challenging issues that corporate funders and schools face as they partner to effect change in our educational system. Hopefully this will be the start of more informal “Uncommon Tables” throughout the U.S. as attendees go back to their home offices and share what they learned.

Just such a collaborative effort is under way on the issue of educational assessment and it offers insight into how it can happen and what motivates the companies involved.

Andrew Thomson, the public sector consul on global education at Cisco Systems, has witnessed firsthand the power of this collaboration. The former Saskatchewan minister of learning tells how and why his company is working with Intel and Microsoft to maximize what they can bring to the table in a multi-sector approach to improving education.

Having made the transition from public sector official to a private sector education role, Thomson says he enjoys the benefit of getting to say what he wants. But while he can talk about the issues more freely, it’s the inability to take action on those issues that he finds frustrating in the private sector.

“All of our great ideas don’t go anywhere if you can’t get buy-in,” he explains. And that’s where the need for partnership and collaboration between sectors comes in.

To be a part of putting ideas into action, Cisco is in a partnership with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the International Association of the Evaluation of Educational Achievement aimed at transforming global educational assessment and improving learning outcomes. Joining Cisco in this effort are Intel and Microsoft. Thomson says the three companies came together in January at the Learning and Technology World Forum in London “with the intention of changing the world.”

The three large, global technology companies have different business models – Cisco sells networks, Microsoft sells licenses and Intel sells devices – but they all compete for attention in the education market. All three are also committed to changing education in the United States and globally, and, according to Thomson, their leadership became convinced through the World Economic Forum that “education itself was still the best way to drive change in the world.”

The sheer number and variety of educational systems worldwide poses a significant challenge to any effort to effect change on a global scale. Thomson points out, however, there are three characteristics common to any system of education that guides the partnership’s work:

1. Education everywhere is a social construct. It is not an industry or a vocation. “People come together to provide skills competencies and abilities for their children to succeed.”
2. Systems are comparable enough in their desire to measure progress. A kind of assessment unique to education is common across all systems.
3. There is still an economic component to education. In all countries its purpose includes fostering social development, citizenship and an ability to participate in the economy.

Thomson says that collaborating to tackle the issue of educational assessment worldwide requires Cisco and the others to step out of their “comfort zone.” They are accustomed to relationships through which they sell billions of dollars in technology to the education sector. Now they have to listen to those same customers and ask what they are using it for.

“And sometimes saying to customers you don’t really need to buy more technology from us.” Thomson remarks. “What we need to do is figure out a better way to use it.” Figuring these things out cannot be driven by revenue generation, he stresses. “It’s not about selling more. It’s about changing things.”

The kind of change that Cisco, Intel and Microsoft are striving for will not happen without involving academics, countries (the owners of the educational systems) and corporations in identifying and assessing 21^st century skills. Thomson points out that these “aren’t the skills that will get you hired. They are the skills that will you get fired if you don’t have them.”

The need for skills like collaboration, innovation, articulation and application of knowledge is common throughout the world in the 21^st century. To determine how best to assess and monitor the teaching and learning of these skills worldwide will take an approach that involves all of the sectors of society where these skills are put to use.

Thomson says that the “Uncommon Table” the Boston College Center seeks to create for collaboration on education will need a “big tent.” That’s just the approach being taken by Cisco and the other companies. Their initiative on assessment draws from educators in Australia, Finland and Portugal, parts of Asia, and the United States, if the fragmentation of the U.S. educational system can be worked with. He says success will take willing partners open to foreign advice and academics prepared to collaborate and ready to adapt change into their own systems.

Just a few months into the collaboration on educational assessment, Thomson describes the process as “remarkable.”

“If we can find that right way to keep that disparate group of people working together; if we can find that right ecosystem at a national level to actually implement, we’re going to make a tremendous difference,” Thomson predicts.

“And that’s a difference that’s not there to drive revenue. It’s not there to create new product streams. It’s there simply to create a better world.”

So if you want to know what the story is with the mystery of successful business investment in education, IBM’s Stan Litow is your man. As a product of the New York City public schools, an education activist, a former deputy chancellor of New York’s school system and IBM’s vice president for corporate citizenship and corporate affairs and president of the IBM International Foundation – the point man in its efforts to improve education – Litow has lived this saga on both sides.

From his unique perspective, Litow recognizes that at a time when business may be more concerned than ever with the condition of education in the United States, it will take an uncommon approach to effectively address problems with an institution like no other. This approach must marshal the resources and expertise of every sector of society.

A crushing economic crisis is threatening business and society while every aspect of both is becoming integrated on a global scale. Simultaneously, American students are losing ground academically, posing a threat to the competitiveness of their nation and its businesses. The question is not whether business should be involved in bringing about change in American education, but how. Unfortunately, past experiences of many companies with education efforts are marked by frustration and failure.

Litow acknowledges that education “is a very difficult enterprise,” and while there have been successes with model programs and some great schools, they don’t come to scale. Why?

“Because there are a variety of entrenched, difficult, thorny issues, structural problems that inhibit them,” says Litow. Ideas such as introducing unconventional people into school management and teaching are put out there but they don’t really take off because of barriers in the system. “It’s not going to happen at scale,” Litow says, “unless somebody understands why it hasn’t happened before.”

Litow points to the “structural impediments” of a 20^th century institution operating in the 21^st century. The consolidation that has brought 20 to 30 percent in cost savings to the private sector in the past 15 years hasn’t arrived in an institution where 16,000 school districts spend $55 billion on operations and management alone. “It’s an outmoded institution,” remarks Litow. “Why is a school run in the exact same way that it was run in 1925?”

But Litow stresses that business can’t merely charge to the rescue with solutions. There’s more required to create significant, lasting change. “You can’t change something you don’t understand.”

Litow notes that when you look at business management consultants, the best are those who understand the organization they are being asked to change. “You don’t bring in consultants who’ve never worked in that industry before and expect success.” It’s no different with K-12 education, which is “complex, difficult, expensive and high stakes.” To succeed you must devote time and effort to learn how it operates, looking at every issue from the length of the school day to teacher seniority and how those teachers are educated.

And Litow explains that it’s not about finding and knowing “best practices,” which can be dismissed as irrelevant because they came from somewhere “different.” It’s about understanding why reform efforts designed to improve schools failed or did not come to scale. Was it because of costs, labor issues, politics, management or governance? Don’t expect it to be that easy.

“It’s not one of these issues,” Litow says, “There are no silver bullets.”

On the bright side, Litow sees a platform for change today perhaps like none before. The economic downturn and increased competition and performance in places such as China and India are powerful incentives alone. But they are coupled with incredible opportunity and energy provided by a new White House administration that is making education important, doubling expenditure on K-12 education and creating a $5 billion innovation fund.

Litow emphasizes, however, that business must see its role is not about “writing checks.” The key to success, Litow says, is “really figuring out who has to be together to figure out what didn’t work, and who has to come together to figure out what would, in a way that would inform not just the business community but inform the public about what we could do to improve education.”

This means bringing together academics, politicians, unions, higher education, nonprofits and business. Business needs to be represented, Litow reminds, because long after individual politicians are gone, business will be around with its resources, ideas, expertise, political capital and leadership.

This collaborative approach – the kind envisioned by the Boston College Center as an Uncommon Table – requires an environment that is safe and inviting for all. Litow explains that since business always weighs what could go wrong, “if you want them involved in something as messy and as difficult as K-12, you have to provide a safer way to be involved and increase the likelihood of success.”

On the other hand, he comments, you don’t want business to come in “throwing hand grenades.” Litow describes as “empty rhetoric” the notion of “just wipe it all out.” Educators, too, must feel invited, respected and engaged in a collaborative effort.

Litow hopes that an Uncommon Table can bring a greater level of understanding and promote more partnership across all sectors, leading to broader consensus around what needs to happen and helping to create community. He sees emerging leadership on education as the real purpose of the discussions and “the one single, most important thing that’s needed. Without it, systemic strategies to improve teaching and learning will simply not reach scale.”

Collaboration and leadership alone won’t address the problems of education and there is no one-and-done solution to be delivered, Litow cautions. “You can’t invent something like it’s the Ten Commandments and that it will exist forever.” Things will get better, he says, but the key is to stick with it and do the hard work required to continually assess, improve and monitor.

While the road ahead may be long and winding, Litow has no doubt about the starting point: “I don’t know how you get to the hard work unless you get the right people around the table to at least begin.”

Wagner, co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and author of “The Global Achievement Gap”, said the latest challenge facing education essentially puts it between a rock and a hard place. The “rock” is the new set of skills that all students will need for work, learning and citizenship in a knowledge society. The “hard place” is the fact that the Internet generation is differently motivated and educators do not know how to teach this new breed of student all the new skills they will need to succeed in college, in careers and as citizens.

Wagner explained that conventional teaching that worked in a 19^th and 20^th century society focused on factual recall rather than application of knowledge. Schools rely on multiple choice tests because of a single curriculum approach used in the United States: test preparation. He acknowledged that the accountability these tests seek is fine but lamented that “we try to do it on the cheap,” often at the expense of things like field trips and other more experiential learning. As a result, college professors and employers find their charges woefully unprepared.

“In the 21^st century, more important than what you know is what you can do with what you know,” he said. “Multiple choice tests don’t evaluate by asking you to do or show what you know.”

To address this gap between what students know and what they need to know how to do, Wagner has drafted the 7 Survival Skills for Careers, College and Citizenship:

1. Critical thinking and problem solving
2. Collaboration across networks and leading by influence
3. Agility and adaptability
4. Initiative and entrepreneurialism
5. Effective oral and written communication
6. Access and analyze information
7. Curiosity and imagination

Wagner dismisses as a myth the notion that today’s generation of students and young workers are not motivated to work. “They are not unmotivated to work. They are differently motivated.”

He explained that the kids who grew up on the Internet are accustomed to communication that is immediate and always on. The web is something they use for friendships, self-directed learning and self-expression as evidenced by their prolific reporting via Facebook and uploading of videos to YouTube. Everywhere but at school, these young people are constantly connected to create and multitask.

Because they are accustomed to learning on their own and from peers, Wagner noted, this generation has less fear and respect for authority. Specifically they don’t like to be talked down to. But perhaps their most encouraging trait is that they want to make a difference in what they choose as a career and do interesting things.

So how can business help our schools give today’s students what they need so that they enter the work force prepared for what 21^st century society needs? Wagner identified five actions business can take to help provide leadership on education.

• Explain what skills matter most and why. Make it clear that standards should be based on competency over content.
• Lobby for and fund Accountability 2.0 R&D to develop tests that measure the skills that matter most.
• Lobby for higher standards to license and recertify educators so expectations for teachers are those of knowledge workers, not assembly line workers.
• Fund development of model schools where exemplary lessons can be videotaped.
• Ensure that every high school student has a meaningful work internship and adult mentor.

A short video of Wagner’s presentation is available below. Center members can view the full video here (login required).

Peggy Siegel, an expert on business partnerships in education reform efforts, offers her perspective on the role business must play to halt the continuing deterioration of the education system. After years of involvement with schools through volunteering and spending millions on resources, American businesses are frustrated by plunging academic achievement levels and a failure of the system to prepare students with the skills needed in the 21^st century global economy. While brighter days for business may lie over the horizon, the clouds can’t be parted if the next generation enters the work force unprepared.

In her paper, “Taking a Team Approach to Education Reform,” Siegel looks at past business/education partnerships, what worked and what didn’t, and identifies the lessons they provide for tackling the 21^st century challenge.

Siegel analyzes the issue using a unique framework. She takes insights from a classic movie about a grizzled baseball veteran joining forces with an intriguing outsider to mentor a young phenom, and relates them to the approach necessary for 21^st century business/education partnerships to succeed.

Drawing from her experience, Siegel explains the basic themes of the education reform efforts of the past 20 years and how they provide perspective for understanding today’s education environment. Mastering these fundamentals, Siegel writes, is essential to moving forward.

Siegel stresses the importance of understanding the nuances involved in working with the education system in order to put “the right players in the right position.” Education is complicated and business leaders and educators must co-define the agenda for change if they are to be effective. The two sectors must match needs and competencies and seek help from third parties who understand both sides.

A particular challenge to efforts at broad-based education reform, Siegel writes, is the many decision-making points, with 50 states and 15,000 school districts weighing in on what they think is best.

“The education world, in many respects, resembles a perpetual meeting on the pitcher’s mound,” Siegel writes. “No one’s in charge, but all players protect their positions, approaching reform with their own set of preconceptions and experiences. Responsibilities are distributed up, down and throughout the education system. And everyone has a stake in the outcome. The real challenge to ultimate victory, however, resides not in a lack of commitment or ideas, but in the lack of alignment.”

Siegel emphasizes that sustaining the impact of improvement efforts is crucial to achieving true reform. Those involved must “systematically assess and reflect on the past” to tap it for wisdom that bolsters future success. “We need to think in terms of building a dynasty,” she writes.

Transforming the education system will take innovative approaches. This is where business, Siegel writes, can play a crucial role. With their experience adapting and retooling products and services to market demands and needs, business leader can help educators and policymakers reframe the issues surrounding education and reinvent the system. In the 21^st century, learning must be both about understanding content and mastering skills, no longer one or the other.

Download Taking a Team Approach to Education Reform (pdf; free registration and/or login required)