Lenovo 360 Circle: Empowering Partnerships for Sustainability and Innovation Across the Value Chain
Originally published in Lenovo's 2023/24 ESG Report
Stakeholder engagement: Lenovo 360 Circle - Unveiling the origins and mission
As part of Lenovo’s stakeholder engagement efforts, Lenovo 360 Circle was established to increase collaboration and enhance its relationships with channel partners. Lenovo’s robust network of channel partners helps to deliver smarter technology to millions of customers around the world. When it comes to devices, infrastructure, and services and solutions, Lenovo provides channel partners with the resources needed to succeed in a highly competitive market. In 2021, Lenovo expanded that partner support to include sustainability resources through a partner community called Lenovo 360 Circle.
Built with inputs from channel partners, Lenovo 360 Circle was established as a community for partners to come together for collective learning opportunities and collaboration on addressing key issues in sustainability. The community is based on a self-service portal that follows a similar structure to the engagement process established by the UN Global Compact for private and public sectors.
Partners can apply for membership to Lenovo 360 Circle with their company’s sustainability lead and, through the application, identify where they stand in their sustainability efforts into one of three stages: “Connect” partners, who are just starting out and need some help getting their strategy up and running, “Learn” partners, who have a structure in place and are ready to expand their strategies, and “Lead” partners, who are considered ‘advanced’ in their strategies and may already have a track record of goals and success in their sustainability efforts. Once the partner stage is identified, partners are then connected with a set of resources that are tailored to their specific needs – from assessment tools to tailored curriculums, to access to subject-matter experts and community events and webinars.
Lenovo envisions the Lenovo 360 Circle not only as a strategic advantage, but also expediting the shift to more sustainable business practices and models. As a community, the Lenovo 360 Circle addresses sustainability as a new business driver, while unlocking new business opportunities and aligning on common ESG goals.
Thriving together: Collective learning, collaboration, and partnerships in action
FY 2023/24 Lenovo 360 Circle in a few numbers:
- Since September 2023, 343 members joined. The community now counts 363 members representing 2,181 local partners in 43 countries
- 379 sustainability experts as part of the Lenovo 360 Circle community coming from members, from third party’s advisors as well as from Lenovo, representing a year-to-year increase of 102%.
- The community forum participation increased by 179% since the broader opening of the community (~50% panelists coming from members).
- 280+ hours of collaboration through focus groups, sustainability workshops, regular interlocks.
- 5.5 hours training resources developed to support channel sellers and sustainability experts representing 14 courses and 65 modules (~50% industry agnostic content).
- The overall engagement of Lead partners into the community common goals4 keeps improving year over year:
Percentages of Lead partners engaged5 in or reached common goals in FY 2023/24
(percentage changes compared to prior year)
| Goal-category | Renewable Energy | Alignment with SBTi | Circular economy | Philanthropy | Women in Leadership |
| Engaged | 65% (+5%) | 65% (+0%) | 91% (+1%) | 57% (+2%) | 78% (+3%) |
| Reached | 33% (+13%) | 33% (+2%) | n/a6 | 54% (+18%) | 67% (-6%) |
FY 2023/24 key projects linked to Lenovo 360 Circle Priorities:
- Scope 3 inventory management: The Mode of Transportation (MOT) dashboard is providing detailed emissions data for transported goods for channel partners. It allows them to move away from spend-based assumptions to more accurate calculations, consolidating Scope 3 emissions from transportation based on real logistics data, depending on MOT (including air, sea, and truck) and detailed route from manufacturing location to destination. The MOT dashboard has been developed by Lenovo’s Global Supply Chain, while integrating partner feedback.
- Products sustainability attributes: Facilitating access to product sustainability attributes while ensuring transparency and reliability is a key focus of the Lenovo 360 Circle. For this reason, in Spring 2023 the community has joined the “Product ESG Data Transparency” project led by Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC) and CONTEXT. This project has been built in consultation with IT vendors, IT distributors, and IT resellers to create an ESG data platform, primarily focusing on environmental attributes as a first step.
- Packaging: The Lenovo 360 Circle supported Lenovo’s EMEA Education team to design and launch an initiative called ‘Turning Waste into Educational Wonder’, which encourages students and educators to sustainably repurpose Lenovo’s packaging. This initiative comprised a dedicated webpage, instruction booklet in multiple languages and a STEM competition for students to promote skills such as design, engineering, and problem-solving. Overall, there were 160+ submissions from 4,000+ students in 23 countries with nine winners.
- Learning and Development: Leveraging the dedicated focus group and answering to a requirement coming from founding partners, Lenovo has developed the Lenovo 360 Sustainability Learning Paths. The training, primarily targeted at sales and sustainability leaders, offers four learning paths, comprised of courses and interactive, bite-sized modules, to provide essential sustainability knowledge and skills. Learners embark on a journey from sustainability fundamentals, to understanding Lenovo’s ESG approach, and skills to embed sustainability within their business practices. Upon completion, individuals will receive credentials and partners receive Lenovo 360 Accreditation and progression through the levels of Lenovo 360 Circle membership status, where applicable.
As an active participant of the UN Global Compact, Lenovo 360 Circle is also consistently promoting the initiative’s solutions amongst the members of the community while supporting the SDG 17: partnerships for the goals.
Championing sustainability across the value chain
Lenovo 360 Circle has been recognized with Champion status in the 2023 Canalys Global Sustainable Ecosystems Leadership Matrix for outstanding achievement in sustainability-focused partner programs and robust sustainability strategies at an organizational level. Lenovo 360 Circle was also awarded the Best Value Chain Initiative of the Year at CRN’s inaugural Sustainability in Tech summit. This award recognizes a company, or partnership of companies, which are taking steps to reduce emissions across their entire supply chain, reduce waste and resource usage, and provide tangible results of the impact they are making on the environment.
Testimonials from participants:
“Connection is honored to participate as a charter member of Lenovo 360 Circle initiative. Participating in this community has been a tremendous learning experience and has served as a tipping point for Connection to invest in the creation of policies and develop executive sponsored initiatives focused on Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility.”
Brian Hicks, Senior Vice President Product Management and Operations at Connection
“Tackling complex social and environmental challenges is a team sport. The Lenovo 360 Circle systemic approach is a visionary and ambitious, yet complex journey we can all learn from”.
Arnaud Mourot, VP – Global Corporate Alliances and Changemaker Companies at Ashoka
Embracing tomorrow: Mapping out the year ahead for Lenovo 360 Circle
As Lenovo embarks on its journey forward, Lenovo 360 Circle commits to:
- Actively seek out new members who share its vision and values,
- Prioritize and cultivate strategic partnerships that amplify its mission and magnify its impact,
- Quantifying its impact and enhancing its methodologies and tools.
Stakeholder engagement: Corporate Compliance Summit
Lenovo continues to focus on engaging its various stakeholders who may be impacted by its ESG efforts and whose actions can affect Lenovo’s value. On January 15, 2024, Lenovo held a Corporate Compliance Summit in Beijing, inviting guests from the government, industry, university, and research field to discuss corporate compliance issues, jointly exploring new trends, challenges and opportunities, promoting internal compliance management, enhancing risk prevention awareness, and promoting high-quality development of enterprises to create a healthy market environment together
4To become a Lead member, companies must set at least three out of the five common goals relevant to five topics.
5Engaged is defined as companies who have set a goal.
6“n/a” as circularity goal for each partner is defined individually thus incomparable between the companies.
