5.15.2007 - 11:07am ET

(CSRwire) NEW YORK- May 15, 2007- In a rare show of corporate strategic unanimity, 240 corporate leaders attending the CRO Conference in New York City on May 10 agreed that the $32 billion Corporate Responsibility industry has shifted from merely defending companies from regulatory challenges to offensive functions, which include using responsibility gains to help sell products, raise capital and recruit talent.

Leaders such as Cummins CEO and Chairman Tim Solso and Ecolab Chairman CEO President Douglas Baker also agreed that, leading a trend, their companies were deep in efforts to "operationalize sustainability."

The May 10 CRO Conference in New York City drew a record 240 corporate leaders, including the two Fortune 500 CEOs from Cummins and Ecolab, General Counsel from Ryder, the sustainability head of Mattel, Corporate Responsibility chiefs from IBM, Pepsi, Starbucks, Altria, New York Life, Neenah Paper, Interface Group, and 70 other Russell 1000 companies and sustainability advocate leaders from Ceres and SustainAbility, among others.

"The impact of climate change and Al Gore's Academy-Award-winning movie "An Inconvenient Truth" has forever changed the sense of urgency behind the CRO movement. While Sarbanes-Oxley in 2002 forced companies to govern themselves better, climate change has inspired CEOs to change their business models to avoid being destroyed by new climate-driven market demands. Corporate Responsibility Officers are now leading many of their companies’ innovation strategies,” said CRO Conference Chair Jay Whitehead.

SustainAbility founder John Elkington, who Business Week has called "the father of the corporate responsibility movement," put the CRO profession on notice that standing still is not an option. "We are now in what I call the ‘creative destruction’ phase of the movement, driven by climate change," Elikington said at the CRO Conference. "Certain companies and even entire industries will be significantly altered or destroyed by the impact of climate change. This phase can either present the biggest opportunity or biggest danger of many companies’ lives."

As a result, many companies are actively altering their operations, or "operationalizing" their sustainability efforts in order to lower carbon emissions and conserve resources. Mattel’s sustainability chief Jeff Denchfield, for example, outlined the toy giant’s new shipping and distribution structure, which according to Denchfield will cut over 6 million miles of annual driving from his company’s delivery routes.

The CRO Conference Platinum sponsors included Deloitte, SAP, Integrity Interactive, while Gold sponsors included Neenah Paper, SAI Global, Golin Harris, Grant Thornton, Rideau Recognition, CSR Wire.

The next CRO Conference will be held on September 12, 2007 at the Union League Club in Chicago. Keynote speakers include Murray Martin, incoming CEO of Pitney Bowes. The September CRO Conference agenda will be posted starting June 1, 2007 on www.TheCRO.com/conferences.

About The CRO

Founded in 2006 as the voice of the fast-growing $32 billion Corporate Responsibility industry, CRO Corp LLC publishes 20,000-subscriber CRO Magazine, produces the twice-yearly CRO Conferences and 100,000 monthly unique visitor website TheCRO.com and its biweekly e-newletters, and runs membership platform The CRO, which now boasts over 110 corporate members.

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