Supporting
Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Growth in
Central New Jersey
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This site is a slightly updated version of our original site. A new site is being developed at CenterforBusinessExcellence.org.
If you are looking for information on our Agel Sustainable Fundraising Program, or on the Sustainable Business Incubator being developed on association with the ISE at FDU, please email jcloud@cbe-nj.org.
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The Social Enterprise Model | Support for Entrepreneurship |
Welcome
The Center for Business Excellence (CBE) is an organization devoted to transforming the relationship between business and the community, by recognizing and supporting the practices and principles of business excellence through analysis, education, and effective demonstration. These principles are currently embodied for many people in the ideas of sustainable development, social responsibility, spirit in the workplace, and the triple bottom line (people, profits, and the planet).
The Center brings together senior business, government, educational and community leaders to address these issues in a way that is practical, timely, and designed to produce effective change; it offers them a platform for communicating values, objectives, strategies, and initiatives and gaining the support of the community in fostering greater awareness, confidence, and support for business. It works to serve the community by ensuring that our businesses are the best they can be.
Based in Central New Jersey, the Center also promotes strategic initiatives that create visibility, transparency, and sustainable economic growth, both locally and in the wider regional economy. The Center for Business Excellence was founded to sustain a dialog in New Jersey that engages business and civic leaders to advance community and public interests while benefiting business success. The Center believes in and stands for the essential role that business plays in shaping our society for the benefit of all citizens, and seeks to bring together change leaders to support true win-win initiatives that go beyond philanthropy to align the interests of businesses and the community for mutual benefit.
Staff Login:
Research
Publications
Educational Programs
Entrepreneurial Resource Center
Services to Nonprofits
Leadership & Innovation
Win-Win Partnerships
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Current News |
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The
Center is currently focused on two main
initiatives: (1) Working with the Institute for
Sustainable Enterprise at FDU on the development of
the Sustainable Business Incubator, and (2)
promoting the Agel Sustainable Fundraising
Initiative, a continuation of the Beyond
Philanthropy project - a way to provide the CBE and
other nonprofits to create a lasting revenue
source. (More on each of these to
follow.) |
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Recent Events |
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March 30, 2007: States and Climate Change: Leaders or Lab Rats? Sponsored by the Policy Research Institute for the Region, Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy, Princeton University. |
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March 28, 2007: Central Jersey Economic Growth Forum at Middlesex County College in Edison. See PlatformforProgress.com for a new coalition headed by the NJ State Chamber of Commerce, that is taking a leading role in working with the Corzine Administration to realign New Jersey's economic strategies with today's economic realities, including global climate change. |
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5th Annual Non-Profit Symposium at Raritan Valley Community College. Friday, March 16, 2007. "Managing Change: Emerging Trends for Nonprofits" was the overall theme of this event, at which we presented the Agel Fundraising Program to about 50 nonprofit organizations. |
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Past Events |
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Beyond
Philanthropy Committee Meeting, Tuesday, October
12, 4-6 p.m. |
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Central
Jersey Regional Equity Summit, October 28,
2004 |
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Breakfasts
with Champions Seminar
Series |
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June
29, 2004, Central Jersey Business Improvement
Group |
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June
28, 2004, Central Jersey Regional Equity
Summit |
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June
7-9, 2004, Quantum Leadership
Seminar |
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Tues,
Feb 24, 2004: John Sarno on
WorldCom |
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Thurs,
Mar 4, 2004: Judith Anderson on Corporate
Nirvana |
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Spirit
in Business
Forums |
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Click here for the latest version of the Beyond Philanthropy Research Plan |
"Americans need no less than a new paradigm for leadership in their society. I don't know precisely what this paradigm should be, but I know that the roles of business, government, and nongovernmental organizations must move in the direction of closer partnership."
-- Jeffrey E. Garten, The Politics of Fortune: A New Agenda for Business Leaders
"The
greatest myth of the last decade is that CEOs who run their
to maximize shareholder value actually serve their investors
well. In truth, by running their businesses by the numbers
in order to get the stock price up, and thus attempting to
please their shareholders in the near term, these leaders
are putting their companies on course to long-term decline
or even eventual destruction. Business's best-kept secret is
that mission-driven companies accrue far more shareholder
value than do financially driven firms."
-- Bill George (former CEO of Medtronics), "The Company's
Mission is the Message," Strategy+Business Magazine No.
33 (Winter 2003)
"The
quality of life in organizations is deteriorating. People
don't have a sense that their work has meaning. Cynicism
reigns. People don't want to live and work in this way and
organizations don't function optimally when they do.
As we transition from the Age of Information to the Age of
Ideation, leadership will need to attend to our source of
enthusiasm and inspiration -- our soul. The Age of
Information focuses on knowledge and technology. The Age of
Ideation will focus on people, culture, and generating new
sources of gain. Leadership style that suited the
information age will not work for the Ideation Age. A new
style of leadership is required, one that makes
collaboration, empowerment, and innovation possible."
--Richard Bellingham, The Manager's Pocket Guide to
Spiritual Leadership
"First,
we need a full and equal partnership between women and men
in all spheres of life. Second, we need a clear vision of
human possibilities. Third, we need empirical knowledge of
how social and economic systems maintain themselves and how
they change. Fourth, we need an understanding of leverage
points for transformation -- critical intervention points
with a cascade of systemic effects. Fifth, we need the
spiritual courage to take initiative -- personally,
organizationally, and globally -- and to follow through even
in the face of strong resistance."
-- Riane Eisler, "Spiritual Courage: Reinventing
Ourselves Personally, Organizationally, and
Globally"
Services:
Conference
and Event Planning
Research Services
Network & Association Management
words
that alter
the world
vision
inspiration
ethics
leadership
the long view
paradigms
learning organization
continuous improvement
innovation
managing change
resilience
peer support
emotional intelligence
dignity and respect for all stakeholders
finding common ground
diversity
systems thinking
civic engagement
caring, compassion, opportunity, making a difference
self-generating, fluid, adapting net-work community of
communication, learning
shared meaning, purpose and action
peace, justice, freedom
vocational dating
conscious evolution
triple bottom line
challenge
initiating
conducting
collaborating
harmonizing
supporting
clarifying
influencing
self-actualization
customer value
"We
ask you to consider this critical shift in thinking
- the shift to seeing the company itself as the
ultimate creation... It means spending less of your
time thinking about specific product lines and
market strategies, and spending more of your time
thinking about organizational design... "We
don't mean to imply the visionary companies never
had superb products or good ideas. They certainly
did, and... most of them view their products and
services as making useful and important
contributions to customers' lives. Indeed, these
companies don't exist just to 'be a company;' they
exist to do something useful. But we suggest that
the continual stream of great products and services
from highly visionary companies stems from their
being outstanding organizations, not the other way
around. Keep in mind that all products, services,
and great ideas, no matter how visionary,
eventually become obsolete. But a visionary company
does not necessarily become obsolete, not if it has
the organizational ability to continually change
and evolve beyond existing product life
cycles." "Great
leaders do not want to have followers, they want to
spawn more leaders." "The
CBE can be seen as paving a developmental path of
the next stage of evolution that is actually
encoded in each of us, and unfolds when we are in a
resonant field that reinforces our "memory of the
future" (Barbara Hubbard). The CBE links
participants to key evolutionary teachers, peers,
leaders, intitiaves, and ideas that are guiding us
forward. Through our subjective input we begin to
feel our collective field, and sense that we are
not alone. Each participant is a center of
universal creativity with a unique perspective and
set of gifts. Each person places their subjective
experience and insights into the "field." Each of
us is being activated as individuals through our
participation in the whole system. Each of us is
emerging to our next developmental stage. The CBE
offers a field for conscious cocreation." "One
of the challenges facing innovators and change
agents in any area is simply that of being heard.
The mass media creates the illusion of a
multiplicity of coherent ideas, while frequently
creating nothing more than a cacophony of competing
marketing messages. Such messages, however
beguiling, cannot produce genuine
transformation. "Human
beings need to speak and to listen to each other
individually and in small groups, to dialogue and
to engage with ideas, to absorb and to appropriate
not only the content of each message but also its
real context, its emotional weight, its personal
and social significance. And they then need to be
able to build on these ideas with practical and
concerted action." "Business
has become, in this last half century, the most
powerful institution on the planet. The dominant
institution in any society needs to take
responsibility for the whole -- as the church did
in the days of the Holy Roman Empire. But business
has not had such a tradition. This is a new role,
not yet well understood or accepted. "Built
into the concept of capitalism and free enterprise
from the beginning was the assumption that the
actions of many units of individual enterprise,
responding to market forces and guided by the
'invisible hand' of Adam Smith, would somehow add
up to desirable outcomes. But in the last decade of
the twentieth century, It has become clear that the
'invisible hand' is faltering. It depended upon a
consensus of overarching meanings and values that
is no longer present. So business has to adopt a
tradition it has never had throughout the entire
history of capitalism: to share responsibility for
the whole. Every decision that is made, every
action that is taken, must be viewed in the light
of that kind of responsibility. And
that, to me, is what the World
Business Academy
is really about. It is not just another association
of business people to exchange information and
foster collegiality. It is about investing
ourselves in a task of historic proportions. Some
will be called to this task and many will not.
Those who are will find it to be extremely
gratifying and fulfilling." "I
believe that CBE is, in part, about creating and
modeling a New Paradigm of meaning for business
excellence. When we plumb and peel the
corporate/organization/business onion to its
essence, what is it all really about? What does it
mean to be fully human in work and in the
world? " "The
goal is to create new-paradigm ways of doing
business that positively impact the conscious
evolution of society and the world leading to
health, prosperity and sustainability for all." "To
massively develop means and act in accordance with
what those means permit without careful
consideration of ends in the context of values is
... idiotic. ... The birth of the Chaordic Age
calls into question virtually every concept of
societal organization, management, and conduct on
which we have come to rely."
-- Charles, Prince of Wales
--James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras, BUILT TO
LAST: Successful Habits of Visionary
Companies
-- Gay Hendricks & Kate Ludeman, The
Corporate Mystic: A Guidebook for Visionaries with
Their Feet on the
Ground
-- Ron Bell, Spirit in Business and
Work
-- Jonathan Cloud, Introduction to Breakfasts
with Champions
--Dr. Willis Harman (1918-1997), World Business
Academy Cofounder and Fellow
--Ron Bell, Bell Consulting
--Victoria Zelin
--Dee Hock, founder of Visa
For more information, please contact:
8 Revere Drive, Basking Ridge, NJ 07920
908-581-8418 info@cbe-nj.org