email rounding up the latestColleagues call me a unicorn, because I am a rarity: by day, a sustainable business executive; by night, an occasional author of papers and speaker at business schools. Unfortunately, that connection between practice and academia is highly unusual.
But something wasn’t right. We had paid a tiny sum relative to the cost of our energy bill. How could something with almost no value on the open market actually reduce carbon emissions? I tried to find evidence on RECs without success but, based on a gut feeling that they were a scam, I cancelled our contract.
That research represents another kind of unicorn in academia: useful information. Most journals are of little use to practitioners. That’s because academic publication is only tangentially about fixing societal problems: it is mostly about keeping your job. That often means pursuing a tidy, obscure subject tied to a researcher’s speciality but irrelevant in the world of real beings.
There is one final insult: even if published papers are worthwhile and available, they are often boring and impenetrable. Academia still suffers from the “Sagan effect” — the idea that, if you are entertaining or accessible to popular audiences, you must not be serious. Second, we must bridge the gap. Professor Tom Lyon at the University of Michigan is one academic who does so. He and colleagues wroteRecommendedLyon’s article was picked up elsewhere, partly because of his involvement in two innovative organisations. The first is the Network for Business Sustainability at the Ivey Business School in Ontario, which culls the best, most relevant research and highlights it.