News and Events
University of Cambridge Programme for Industry celebrates its 20th anniversary
26 September 2008
A pioneering University of Cambridge centre for sustainability leadership, the Cambridge Programme for Industry (CPI), is celebrating its 20th Anniversary with a series of events and publications.
The first of these is a party in King's College tonight, 26th September, at which the guest speaker will be the Vice Chancellor, Professor Alison Richard. This will be followed by an alumni event at the Science Museum in December and a private reception hosted by HRH The Prince of Wales.
CPI focuses on helping senior executives of some of the world's biggest businesses, as well as leaders from the public sector and civil society, understand how they can respond to the critical sustainability challenges facing the world today, such as poverty and climate change.
Having started life in 1988 in two small rooms in the Engineering Department with a remit to develop continuing education programmes for industry, CPI now has offices in four continents and 45 staff worldwide. It will soon be expanding from its current office opposite the Royal Cambridge Hotel, into a second building around the corner in Lensfield Road, where it is planning a zero-carbon refit.
CPI works closely with world leaders and international experts, from the University, business and civil society, and for nearly a decade has worked exclusively on sustainable development issues. It offers a wide range of open and customised seminars on sustainability leadership, not only for many of the world's biggest companies but also for public sector institutions such as the Chinese government and the World Bank. CPI has a worldwide network of over 2,000 senior executives and key opinion leaders who have been on its programmes and who are members of the Cambridge Sustainability Knowledge Network.
Tony Juniper, one of the UK's best known environmentalists and former Executive Director of Friends of the Earth, believes that the work of organisations such as CPI has helped to ensure that the challenges of climate change, poverty and degradation of the environment are now on the agenda everywhere.
Juniper said, "CPI has been a pioneer in offering companies and other organisations the opportunity to really understand the issues and see what they can do to make a positive difference. Although we are only just beginning to meet these urgent global challenges, today we should celebrate the fact that we are at last making a start. The team at CPI should be proud of what they have achieved and excited about what will come next."
A key development in CPI's history was being asked by the Prince of Wales to develop a new programme that would help business leaders understand how a more progressive response to environmental and social issues could also make their companies more profitable. The first seminar in The Prince of Wales's Business & the Environment Programme was run at Madingley Hall in 1994 for a group of 34 business people.
Since then, it has not only become CPI's flagship programme, with seminars running annually in six locations around the world, but has spawned a number of other activities such as the Prince's Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change, which has been active since 2005 working with national governments and the business community to progress policy and action on climate change. The Prince of Wales regularly meets the CPI team and takes a close interest in the programmes that he set up.
Oscar-winning former US vice-president Al Gore chose CPI to run his Climate Project in the UK, which brought him to Cambridge for 2 days in 2007 to give public lectures in the Corn Exchange and the Guildhall and to work with 200 delegates from sectors including the media, faith groups, schools and business on communicating climate change.
Next year CPI will be bringing together 25 Nobel Laureates to consider issues of climate justice and energy security, and to prepare a memorandum to be communicated to world leaders who, in Copenhagen in December 2009, will be negotiating a global deal for tackling climate change.
According to Director Polly Courtice, CPI increasingly acts as a bridge between the University and the business and policy world. Courtice said, "We are very fortunate that our position within the University allows us to draw on the extensive research interests across the University that are relevant to aspects of sustainability, such as developments in energy use, sustainable architecture and transport, and in the understanding and conservation of biodiversity. We have been able to combine these with other leading-edge thinking from across the world to enrich our programmes and support our active alumni network, whose members are looking for solutions to the challenges that society faces."
Neil Carson, Chief Executive of the global company Johnson Matthey pays tribute to the role played by Polly Courtice in
CPI's evolution, saying, "CPI has gained a worldwide reputation for its ground-breaking leadership programmes. It has been
able to do this because of the professionalism and dedication of its staff, and because of the visionary leadership provided
for the last twenty years by Polly Courtice."
- Useful links
- Cambridge Programme for Industry
- Featured video and audio
- Cambridge Ideas
- More video and audio
- Related pages
- Staff newsletter
- Research Horizons magazine
- Reporter
- Information for staff and students
