This time around I want to share some thoughts and ideas that came up for me this week about CSR and the conversations we have about it (and as a preview, if you keep reading, you’ll get to hear what Elvis Presley thinks of sustainability).

The other day I had the chance to sit in on a conference call and presentation hosted by the Stanford Graduate School of Business Office of Executive Education and their Business Strategies for Environmental Sustainability (BSES) program. Part presentation and part sales pitch for the upcoming BSES in October, the webinar entitled “Sustainability Matters” was hosted by Professor William Barnett, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute at Stanford and Director of the BSES program.

Professor Barnett started out with a discussion of the Kuna Indian Nation living off the coast of Panama. According to Barnett, the Kuna demonstrate the harmony that can exist between indigenous people and their natural environment. They’ve lived a seemingly isolated existence in which they’ve developed incredibly sustainable farming practices without influence from the outside world.

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