What is the Network for Business Sustainability?
The Network for Business Sustainability (NBS) is advancing sustainable development to assure the prosperity for all, today and into the future.
By integrating academic research with practical experience, NBS members are mobilizing businesses to contribute to thriving communities and ecosystems.
More than 35,000 business leaders, researchers and students from around the world contribute to and follow our work. We also facilitate a community of 170+ sustainability research centres in business schools around the world.
NBS's main office is at the Ivey Business School (Western University, London, Canada), with a francophone office at L’Université du Québec à Montréal (Montreal, Canada).
Our members drive our impact
NBS’s Sustainability Centres Community links 170+ business school research centres across 6 continents.
While we are headquartered in Canada, it’s our global membership that drives our impact. Together, members of NBS envision a world in which business activity helps communities flourish within planetary boundaries. “Business as usual” is falling short of these ideals. New ways of thinking are needed to move beyond the status quo.
That’s where our work comes in. Our members are knowledgeable in a range of business areas. For more than a decade, NBS has been creating space for these business leaders and researchers to exchange ideas and push each other’s thinking. We share their ideas through our podcasts, articles, reports and meetings.
The result is a huge collection of quality content, mobilized worldwide.
Examples of our work
Here are some of the recent questions our members have addressed. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive monthly content and invitations to share your own questions and insights.
How can I get the most out of unlikely alliances?
Barbara Gray, emeritus professor at Smeal College of Business, and Gord Lambert, former sustainability and innovation lead for Suncor Energy, offer advice. Listen to their podcast.
Barbara: “Entrepreneurs often feel like they don’t have time for collaboration. But if they can find a partner who can sit down with them and spin scenarios for an hour once a month, they may really begin to see new opportunities for innovation.”
Gord: “You feel the difference of a collaborative table versus what I call a cooperative table....My definition of cooperative work is pursuit of individual interests jointly....whereas collaboration is this joint effort to achieve common goals, where there's shared accountability for the outcome.... When it works well…you get really two plus two equals five outcomes.”
How “successful” can social enterprise really be?
Jeremy Hockenstein, co-founder of Digital Divide Data, and Wendy Smith, professor at the University of Delaware, describe a case study. Listen to the podcast.
Wendy: It's hard to navigate the ongoing tension between social and financial goals. Sometimes one is taking priority, sometimes the other, and you're kind of navigating both at all times. In the long term, it's a big win win. In the moment, it feels like a lot of tradeoffs.
Jeremy: We always heard, “Oh, if only the intelligent, competent managers from the for-profit sector came to the nonprofit sector, they’d revolutionize it.” It turns out there's a reason what we're doing has been tough. There's just much more challenge around resources and having to balance those goals.
Join us. It’s free. It’s valuable.
If you’re working to make business more sustainable, we hope you’ll join the network by subscribing to our newsletter. That’s where you’ll find the latest content and calls to contribute your own ideas. All geographies, disciplines and career stages are welcome.
Thoughts from current members
“Thoughtful, in-depth treatment of topics I'm interested in. I ALWAYS read the NBS emails because I ALWAYS find an interesting article that makes me a better sustainability manager.”
- - Roger Bowman, Sustainability Program Leader, Momentive Performance Materials, United States
“[The content] always provides interesting and useful information on business sustainability and new trends on the topic.”
- - Daniela Acuna, Sustainable Agriculture Analyst, Ministry of Agriculture, Chile
“I am very thrilled with the podcast. I certainly recall it was a powerful conversation while doing it. On reflection it brought out some terrific insights. We made a great team!”
- - Gord Lambert, Interim President and CEO, Alberta Energy Regulator, Canada
“We are really happy about this contribution on NBS.net. Thanks for the great opportunity and for your excellent edits. Translating research for a broader audience is not easy, but is so important. It should be considered an inherent part of doing research. What NBS is doing is really precious.”
- - Stefano Ramelli, PhD candidate, University of Zurich, Switzerland
About our team
Want to learn more about the small but mighty team that facilitates this work? Check out our profiles.
Our Land Acknowledgement
The Network for Business Sustainability (NBS) is housed at the Ivey Business School on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak and Attawandaron peoples. We, the NBS team, acknowledge the severity of both historical and ongoing injustices faced by Indigenous groups in Canada due to settler colonialism. We recognize Indigenous peoples as the original stewards of this land and will endeavour to promote stewardship practices to protect the regenerative capacity and biodiversity of the land.
We encourage our global community to reflect on the land on which they live, learn and play. It is important to understand how we each fit into the land's history in order to ensure a respectful, prosperous and sustainable future.
NBS commits to amplifying Indigenous businesses and activities through social media channels and sharing our platform with diverse voices that must be heard in order to accomplish our mission.
About our logo
Executive Director Tima Bansal describes the origin of the NBS logo: "I selected the trefoil because it is the simplest complex knot in mathematics. Mathematics is the only discipline with a universal language; sustainability should also be a universal language. I also like the imagery of a knot, because it is a continuous loop that circles back on itself, which represents connectedness. Finally, we made the loops sufficiently large to represent economy, environment and society, but with a large centre to show how they support the core."
