About Us

Sustainable Enterprise

Our company, like most in the world, is a family business; as are the pioneering champions of sustainability that we feature on this site and in our sustainable enterprise research and consultancy. So the story of our company is in many ways the story of our lives. Mike has instigated a variety of small enterprises for fun and profit. Helga has dedicated her life to social enhancement as a health professional, in both developing and developed countries. Both of us have a deep commitment to equity, and through our love of nature, especially the sea, and our life in the natural beauty of New Zealand we care deeply about the environment.

We have been academics in management and health for the last twenty five years and for the last twelve of these have embraced storytelling both as a research methodology and as a mode of sharing our findings. So Sustainable Enterprise is a storytelling company.

In one of our earlier companies throughout the 1990s we grew Kiwifruit for the global export market. We developed the orchard from excessive chemical sprays to Bio-Gro certified organic, and it was this experience that deepened our involvement with the sustainability movement.

Mike is Professor of Leadership and Sustainability at  the Management School at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. He was dean of the school for eighteen years prior to stepping down to focus on providing business advice.  Waikato Management School is accredited by AACSB, EQUIS and AMBA, one of only about thirty business schools in the world to achieve this distinction. In 2002 the faculty made a commitment to sustainability at the core of the school’s Purpose. Unusually the school has faculty across every discipline who are active researchers and teachers of sustainability in business. Individually and collectively they have been an inspiration to create our business dedicated to the implementation of sustainable enterprise ideas in practice.

During 1996 to 1999 Mike and three co-authors researched and told the stories of ten elite sports organisations, and from this developed a theory of Peak Performance, which was published in a book of that title in 2000. Key findings from this research were that clarity of shared Purpose and inspirational leadership in a family-like environment provide the best foundations for flow and peak performance. The book spawned an organisational development business Inspiros Worldwide Ltd www.inspiros.org. Mike and Helga and four colleagues regularly conduct peak performance workshops with iconic clients around the world. Through these experiences we came to realise the potential for companies to do well by doing good through building sustainability principles into their business models, but learned how few were actually doing so.

In 2005 Mike and Helga embarked on another global research journey to tell the stories of the genesis of ten iconic enterprises that were founded on sustainability principles and have become globally recognised brands. From these stories we have created a theory of Sustainable Peak Performance to help other companies to embrace sustainable development within their business models and practices, and thereby help to make the world a better place. These stories and the theory form the basis for our company.

We believe that there is nothing so practical as great theory. Theory is an explanation of relationships and of cause and effect. With great theory it is possible to implement Sustainable Peak Performance development, avoiding pitfalls and with increased velocity.

We hope you enjoy exploring our web site. In it you will find stories about how we have personally experienced a variety of sustainability issues, what we know about these issues and how every environmental and social problem can be turned into an enterprise opportunity for its resolution.