PROJECT SCOPE

Hitachi has a strong focus on Social Innovation, but while multi millions of dollars are being put into social beneficial initiatives, there are not quantifiable and repeatable measurements for success that can rival the ubiquity of common financial measurements like P&L, EBITDA etc. Startups and Fortune 500 companies may all aspire to do social good, or support sustainability, but the ultimate measurements of the success of a company that board members and investors use are the capital market accepted measurements of revenue growth, profitability and share price, which is driven by long term projections on those financial metrics. Good businesses can create social harm (e.g. the opioid crisis driven in part by profits for pharmaceuticals, social media creating obsession and distraction in an effort to monetize its user base to appease financial investors, food industries putting profit and "share of stomach" over health, etc). Investors are looking for ways to invest in socially responsible companies but ultimately the only repeatedly quantifiable measurement of success are financial in nature. Therefore, more and more institutions and consulting companies appeal for approaches such as “triple bottom lines” to emphasize the value of environmental and social good. In this context, all most all commercial companies are issuing sustainability report annually. However, lack of timeliness and lack of substantial, information are fatal disadvantages of those reports, making them more like a propaganda rather than a reflective introspection or an informative communication with investors.

Even though Wenco currently can provide very comprehensive solutions to measure and improve productivity, asset health and safety via its Digital Platform, ESG is the missing piece of the puzzle. Therefore, this project is designed to encourage students to study existing guidelines and edge-cutting research of quantifying and reporting social good, sustainability, quality of life improvement, and other metrics that can be used across industries as a balance to purely financial measurements. These "Social Profit" measurements could be used to score candidate startups for investors and investment funds (particularly for employee pension funds or other limited partners that may desire socially responsible investment), or for shareholders and boards to evaluate corporate success beyond general "goodwill" or avoidance of bad brand image. These measurements should be numerical in nature and serve as a weighted combination with traditional financial measurements to create a truly balanced Balance Sheet of financial profitability AND social profitability. The data collecting and reporting shall be more frequent than currently common annual report. It could be quarterly, monthly, weekly, even daily, if not hourly, to maximize the efficacy of the report, and could eventually evolve to a real-time dashboard.

Students are highly encouraged to start with mining industry and /or adjacent industries such as quarrying and construction, if they have appropriate knowledge, experience, resources, and connections.

Students should be prepared to: To Be Found in Attachment

Students will get feedback and mentorship directly from company strategic team and the VP of strategy and marketing