“Ever had one of those conversations,” Stu Hart asked the crowd, “where you think you and another person are talking about the same thing, only to discover you’ve been discussing something completely different?  In my work, I run into that all the time.”

Stuart Hart is a professor at Cornell’s Johnson School of Management, recent author of the acclaimed “Capitalism at the Crossroads”, and one of the world’s foremost experts on the strategies and business opportunities for sustainable enterprises and serving the world’s poor.  Hart was co-presenting with colleague Mark Milstein (of the World Resources Institute) at Cornell’s 3rd annual Sustainable Enterprise Symposium.  

Hart and Milstein explained that there are so many different “sustainability tribes”, each using their own vocabulary of buzzwords, that even basic communication proves difficult and unwieldy; strategic planning and collaboration are even harder.  How can we collaborate in creating a better future if we can’t even communicate?