Professor Goutam Challagalla has been appointed as the dentsu Group Chair in Sustainable Strategy and Marketing, an announcement made following a meeting between IMD President Jean-François Manzoni and dentsu Group President and CEO Hiroshi Igarashi this week in Tokyo.
Together with his team, Challagalla will support the activities of the IMD Center for Sustainable and Inclusive Business, which aims to generate cutting-edge insights and practical solutions for businesses that aspire to create positive social and environmental impact. The work will be carried out in collaboration with dentsu and its strong track record of providing sustainable business solutions, including the business accelerator “dentsu good”.
A renowned researcher, − and recipient of the 2015 Maynard Award for the best paper in the Journal of Marketing published by the American Marketing Association, − Challagalla has helped many companies rethink their business models and build new capabilities in the face of the digital revolution. Now, the Professor of Strategy and Marketing is helping companies to integrate sustainability-related challenges and opportunities into their strategy.
“Placing sustainability at the core of a business model is complex and requires unconventional thinking. There is only one credible path to understanding the complexities of this phenomenon: through research,” says Challagalla.
One of the expected outcomes of the research is the development of indicators to measure the sustainability transformation of companies and businesses − including consumer awareness − and, with that, provide an insight into the concrete impact of promoting business sustainability on brand and corporate value. Dentsu and IMD are also considering co-organizing sustainability-related events to disseminate the research results and engage with key stakeholders.
