ATLANTA, GA -- May 8, 2006. As mentioned in the April 2006 issue of the CPBIS newsletter, we have been working diligently with the CPBIS Board of Executives (BoE), the CPBIS Industry Advisory Board, and the Georgia Tech administration to develop and implement vehicles and programs to ensure the long-term sustainability of the center. A key element in this process has been the development and subsequent endorsement by the BoE of the center’s Sustainability Plan, an overarching document that lays out strategies for ensuring that we remain an industry-valued, academic center of high quality. 

A BoE subcommittee formed to help guide the development of the Sustainability Plan began by reviewing the center’s vision statement. The original vision statement, while appropriate when it was formulated, emphasized paper production, and was somewhat lengthy: “The Center for Paper Business and Industry Studies is a globally recognized and industry-valued academic center, creating knowledge and tools that support paper industry decision-makers, and producing interdisciplinary graduates who contribute to the long-term success of the paper industry.”

The subcommittee considered the term “paper industry” to be overly restrictive. Many traditional paper companies have transformed themselves into, for example, packaging or consumer products companies. After much debate, the term “forest products industry” was chosen to encompass the firms and organizations upon which the center’s activities are focused. Another key point made by the subcommittee was that the Industry is indeed global, a circumstance that makes it appropriate to reach beyond the borders of the U.S. or North America. Our original vision statement did not explicitly articulate this important aspect.
In view of these newly recognized circumstances, the subcommittee recommended the following vision statement, subsequently approved by the BoE, the Sloan Foundation, and Georgia Tech:

“CPBIS is an internationally recognized academic research center providing business knowledge of relevance to the global forest products industry.”

The subcommittee also tackled the center’s mission statement – a statement that describes how it will act in terms of the primary principles and goals that guide it toward its newly stated vision. The revised statement presented to the BoE for endorsement included several new elements, to highlight where the center will focus its activities. Within the context of the new vision, our research will address developments in the global forest products industry, with a core focus on pulp, paper, and packaging issues of the North American industry sector and a commitment to disseminate research findings to the industry. 

The new mission statement, as approved by the BoE, now reads as follows:

“The overall mission of the Center is to become the preeminent business studies research and education enterprise dedicated to business, management, and social science issues. Its purpose encompasses several important elements:

• Focus on research, education, and outreach issues in the pulp, paper, packaging and, more generally, the forest products industry (collectively, the Industry);
• Identify, develop, and support research on business, management, and social science issues that are of critical interest to Industry stakeholders;
• Conduct research that studies the Industry by direct observation, providing research results that are of high, practical value to the Industry;
• Create an academic community that, together with stakeholders, understands the Industry;
• Disseminate and communicate research findings to the Industry in order to facilitate better decision-making in an increasingly competitive environment;
• Provide programs and forums to build management and analytical capacity within the Industry;
• Produce skilled, Industry-oriented Ph.D. and M.S. graduates in a variety of disciplines.”

These new vision and mission statements have positioned us to move forward with a more clearly articulated set of goals and objectives.