At Split Rock, we believe that being a responsible global citizen provides benefits far beyond good public relations. It is also profitable. It has to be in order to be sustainable. Engaging in the life of the communities in which you operate or invest gives you a deeper understanding of the trends affecting your business or investment.

For operating companies, you learn more about your customers and the business environment in which they operate. That knowledge enables you to tailor your products and services to meet your customers’ needs, helping them solve their own business challenges while improving your bottom line in the process.

For investors, drawing closer to the community in which you invest offers you insights into local economic and political trends that can make the difference between success and failure of the enterprise in which you invest. It also introduces you to the challenges that local government officials face in improving the economic prospects of the local community. This insight allows you to align your investment goals with community needs.

Split Rock advises clients on business strategies that succeed commercially, while promoting an ethical and sustainable business culture.

• Sustainability Reviews: Our clients turn to Split Rock for our independent assessment of their business operations from the perspective of sustainability, a concept that includes profitability, social responsibility, and environmental impact. We draw on our deep understanding of both markets and public policy to suggest ways our clients can succeed in delivering a broader range of economic benefits to the communities they serve.
• Building Sustainable Businesses: At Split Rock, we also help clients demonstrate their social responsibility through the goods and services they produce in and for emerging markets. We believe that key to running a sustainable and ethical business is to focus intently on your customers’ needs, both as customers and as stakeholders in the success of their community. We help our clients develop corporate social responsibility (“CSR”) strategies around that organizing principle and assist in implementing individual initiatives that help them achieve their CSR goals.
• Strategic Sourcing: Globalization has made global supply chains possible; it has also made them a competitive necessity. At Split Rock, we help companies put the economic leverage of their supply chains to positive effect by establishing new sources of supply in emerging markets. We also advise corporations, non-profit entities, governments, and international institutions on how best to change the rules of the trading system in ways that improve the prospects for small and medium-sized enterprises in the developing world, effectively using global supply chains as a portal through which such companies can tap the opportunities available in world markets.

Making Markets Work

Split Rock specializes in developing strategies that rely on markets—not regulation or aid— to solve public policy problems. Poverty arises from economic incentives that thwart, rather than nurture, individual investment and enterprise. Trade conflicts often arise from the failure to align market incentives with the public policy goals that governments hope to achieve.

Split Rock advises companies, non-profit entities, governments, and international institutions on structuring the economic incentives in ways that use the efficiency of markets and the intelligence of consumers to meet the economic needs of society. We offer both the analysis and “engineering” needed to convert theory into practice in ways that best serve a community’s needs by allowing its members to serve themselves.