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An organisation’s response to sustainability impacts its competitive advantage.

All organisations grapple with three interrelated sustainability challenges: disclosure, integration and innovation. A fourth challenge emerges because  organisations invariably encounter everything, everywhere, all at once.

Organisations must chart their own way forward in their own time. We help our clients by co-designing approaches for their particular context and culture. Our complexity-fit tools, frameworks and analytics are bespoke and have been tested across an extensive client network in Africa and beyond.

We have also been writing award-winning integrated and sustainability reports for more than two decades.

Anglo American, Freddy Hirsch, Hyprop, TFG and others
Sustainability / ESG Integration

“Putting Shared Value into practice helped TFG boost speed-to-market and capacity, while creating jobs in a rural area and the economy as a whole.” Graham Choice | Head of Design, Manufacturing and Prestige Clothing at TFG

Many organisations struggle to integrate Sustainability thinking and ESG considerations into competitive strategy and the functions and operations required to deliver it. It requires the ability to engage effectively on sustainability issues with any team in the organisation: from Exco to marketing, to finance, and operations. Integration is not an overnight thing. Our approach has been honed by working with half the top 100 companies on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. We’ll work alongside you and your team to make integration a tangible reality. Using Incite’s facilitators, tools and processes:

  • Global leaders such as Anglo American and Discovery have developed decision-making frameworks for Sustainability
  • Listed corporations (e.g.MMH), family businesses (e.g. Freddy Hirsch) and state-owned companies (e.g. Telkom) have identified Profit-Enabled Impact opportunities to scale or accelerate their delivery of societal value.
  • Foundations (e.g. Nedbank Foundation) have explored how strategic CSI can support the delivery of social value at scale.

Your company has a unique pathway to scaling social and environmental impact through the core business model. We’ll work with you to find it and make it happen. Email us to discuss your needs.

Anglo American, Distell, Freddy Hirsch, Hyprop, Pepkor, TFG and others
For organisations based, operating or interested in Africa
Dynamic Thinking Partners

“Your passion for creating Shared Value is infectious. Having access to your knowledge and experience has boosted my own learning, and made crafting our roadmap much clearer.” Yvette Steyn  | Growth & Innovation Lead, Distell Group

Thinking Partnerships provide expert support on Sustainability integration whenever you need it and whatever the topic. They connect your deep granular insight on the business with an Incite Partner’s broad experience across many companies and sectors. Getting traction on sustainability transition requires courage and relentless honesty – about ourselves, our organisations and everything in-between. Tailored to specific needs and contexts, we contract with individuals (often Lead Practitioners) or any sustainability-related team in the organisation (which is pretty much any team these days). Our Thinking Partners have more than 20 years of experience and draw on the latest sustainability theory, methods and tools. Working with Incite thinking partners:

  • Distell explored how Shared Value could form the basis of a local brand
  • Hyprop REIT enhanced ESG integration into corporate disclosure
  • Tiger Brands focused their strategic investment in the sustainability space
  • MMH accelerated sustainability integration into core business strategy.

Thinking Partnerships are agile, affordable and the experience stays in the organisation. They can be adapted to focus on any aspects of sustainability practice. please contact Nicola to discuss your needs.

Photo cropped from original by Sylvain Mauroux on Unsplash

Kumba Iron Ore, Oceana, MTN, Sasol and others
Listed companies and related organisations in Sub-Saharan Africa
Making Integrated Reporting Better and Easier

Disclosure is a critical element of sustainability practice. The International Integrated Reporting Council was launched in 2010 and Incite has actively supported developments in local and international <IR> guidance since that time. In 2020, our team assisted in structuring and writing the Integrated and/or Sustainability Reports for five of the Top 10 in the EY Integrated Reporting Awards (Kumba, Vodacom, Implats, Oceana, Anglo American Platinum). In 2021, we were engaged by the JSE to develop their Sustainability / ESG Disclosure Guidance. We still draft Integrated and Sustainability/ESG Reports for a few companies every year, but our focus is increasingly on disclosure support. This includes facilitating materiality discussions with senior executives, convening stakeholder dialogues and high-level disclosure guidance. We are tracking developments in AI (ChatGPT), with a view to supporting our clients’ transition to technology-enabled disclosure. Contact Jonathon at jon@incite.co.za to discuss your reporting needs.

DISTELL, IMPLATS, NAMDEB, BUSINESS SCHOOL DELEGATES
Ideator: Inclusive, profit-led, ESG innovation

Innovating at the ESG intersect requires contributions from genuinely diverse perspectives. Incite’s approach to ideation analyses patterns of profit-led ESG (aka Shared Value) to help individuals and teams across the organisation meet the sustainability innovation challenge. We believe it’s the fastest route to accelerated understanding of sustainability integration. By making sense of the patterns already finding traction in the field, and within your value chain, people from across the organisation develop their ability to recognise opportunities more quickly. Again and again. Ideator can be used with any team for general awareness or as an always-on inclusive ideation catalyst. It can also be used to identify ideas for testing for a particular initiative e.g new acquisition, brand-building or optimisation.

Using Incite’s Ideator:

  • Training teams at Namdeb competed to find profit-led ESG opportunities across their value chain
  • Online teams at Distell explored how scaled social impact could hep them build better brands
  • Hundreds of delegates at University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), UCT’s Graduate School of Business and Trinity Business College, Dublin have focused their attention on innovations that drive transformative change.

We’ve successfully transitioned Ideator to digital, but we still prefer it in physical space.