Bentley University visiting scholar Philip DesAutels served as chairman of the jury for the Globe Forum's Globe Award for Sustainability Innovation 2011, which will be presented on May 12 at the Stockholm Waterfront Congress Centre in Sweden. Also serving on the jury of internationally recognized experts was Pierre Berthon, Bentley University marketing professor and Clifford F. Youse Chair of Marketing. DesAutels was also a featured speaker at the 2009 and 2010 Globe Forums.
The jury selected Southwest Windpower as this year's Sustainable Innovation Laureate for their economically, socially and ecologically viable innovations to make access to renewable energy affordable, accessible and open. Since its founding in 1987, the company has shipped more than 100,000 turbines to people in more than one hundred countries.
"Wind is a renewable energy source that Southwest Windpower enables people across the globe to access," observes Berthon. "They have changed the very nature of power production from closed and centralized to open and distributed. They stand out as a principled producer of sustainable renewable energy products that represent true innovation and generate long-term value for people and planet."
Founded in 2003 in Sweden, the Globe Forum is an international business network and marketplace for innovators, entrepreneurs and investors interested in sustainable business. The Globe Award was created to foster sustainable development in society and business. It is the world's preeminent sustainability honor and is awarded to Globe Award Laureates who serve as ambassadors and role models. The jury consists of highly experienced and internationally recognized experts. The overall chairman of all jury groups is Lars-Olle Larsson, partner, Sustainable Business Solutions, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sweden.
"This year's competition for the Globe Award for Sustainable Innovation was intense, with candidates from across the globe highlighting the very best sustainable innovations," says DesAutels. "They were more sophisticated in their approach and execution to address the challenges of achieving sustainability, and solutions spanned across multiple domains of innovation, with the very best addressing all four -- Technical, Biotic, Social, and Conceptual."
In addition to Berthon and DesAutels, jury members included: Charlotte Masiello-Riome, communication expert consultant for UN Food and Agriculture Organization (UK); Francesca Polini, founder and CEO of Wecare (UK) and former global communications director at Greenpeace; and M.S. Swaminathan, UNESCO Ecotechnology Chair; and chairman of the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai (Madras), India.
Berthon's teaching and research focuses on electronic commerce, marketing information processing, organization and strategy, and management decision-making. He has written more than 70 academic papers, a number of which have won awards in the US and in the UK. He was Bentley Scholar of the Year in 2003.
DesAutels serves as Microsoft's Director of Academic Strategy and is a visiting scholar at Bentley University, where he is building on Bentley's long history of work in ethical and socially responsible business enterprises to understand the implications of sustainability on business in the 21st century. He also conducts research at Luleå University of Technology in Sweden.