Lenovo 360 Circle: Empowering Partnerships for Sustainability and Innovation Across the Value Chain

Associated Press

16-04-2025

Originally published in Lenovo's 2023/24 ESG Report
Stakeholder engagement: Lenovo 360 Circle - Unveiling the origins and mission
As part of Lenovo's stakeholder engagement efforts, Lenovo 360 Circle was established to increase collaboration and enhance its relationships with channel partners. Lenovo's robust network of channel partners helps to deliver smarter technology to millions of customers around the world. When it comes to devices, infrastructure, and services and solutions, Lenovo provides channel partners with the resources needed to succeed in a highly competitive market. In 2021, Lenovo expanded that partner support to include sustainability resources through a partner community called Lenovo 360 Circle.
Built with inputs from channel partners, Lenovo 360 Circle was established as a community for partners to come together for collective learning opportunities and collaboration on addressing key issues in sustainability. The community is based on a self-service portal that follows a similar structure to the engagement process established by the UN Global Compact for private and public sectors.
Partners can apply for membership to Lenovo 360 Circle with their company's sustainability lead and, through the application, identify where they stand in their sustainability efforts into one of three stages: 'Connect' partners, who are just starting out and need some help getting their strategy up and running, 'Learn' partners, who have a structure in place and are ready to expand their strategies, and 'Lead' partners, who are considered 'advanced' in their strategies and may already have a track record of goals and success in their sustainability efforts. Once the partner stage is identified, partners are then connected with a set of resources that are tailored to their specific needs – from assessment tools to tailored curriculums, to access to subject-matter experts and community events and webinars.
Lenovo envisions the Lenovo 360 Circle not only as a strategic advantage, but also expediting the shift to more sustainable business practices and models. As a community, the Lenovo 360 Circle addresses sustainability as a new business driver, while unlocking new business opportunities and aligning on common ESG goals.
Thriving together: Collective learning, collaboration, and partnerships in action
FY 2023/24 Lenovo 360 Circle in a few numbers:
Percentages of Lead partners engaged5 in or reached common goals in FY 2023/24
(percentage changes compared to prior year)
FY 2023/24 key projects linked to Lenovo 360 Circle Priorities:
As an active participant of the UN Global Compact, Lenovo 360 Circle is also consistently promoting the initiative's solutions amongst the members of the community while supporting the SDG 17: partnerships for the goals.
Championing sustainability across the value chain
Lenovo 360 Circle has been recognized with Champion status in the 2023 Canalys Global Sustainable Ecosystems Leadership Matrix for outstanding achievement in sustainability-focused partner programs and robust sustainability strategies at an organizational level. Lenovo 360 Circle was also awarded the Best Value Chain Initiative of the Year at CRN's inaugural Sustainability in Tech summit. This award recognizes a company, or partnership of companies, which are taking steps to reduce emissions across their entire supply chain, reduce waste and resource usage, and provide tangible results of the impact they are making on the environment.
Testimonials from participants:
'Connection is honored to participate as a charter member of Lenovo 360 Circle initiative. Participating in this community has been a tremendous learning experience and has served as a tipping point for Connection to invest in the creation of policies and develop executive sponsored initiatives focused on Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility.'
Brian Hicks, Senior Vice President Product Management and Operations at Connection
'Tackling complex social and environmental challenges is a team sport. The Lenovo 360 Circle systemic approach is a visionary and ambitious, yet complex journey we can all learn from'.
Arnaud Mourot, VP – Global Corporate Alliances and Changemaker Companies at Ashoka
Embracing tomorrow: Mapping out the year ahead for Lenovo 360 Circle
As Lenovo embarks on its journey forward, Lenovo 360 Circle commits to:
Stakeholder engagement: Corporate Compliance Summit
Lenovo continues to focus on engaging its various stakeholders who may be impacted by its ESG efforts and whose actions can affect Lenovo's value. On January 15, 2024, Lenovo held a Corporate Compliance Summit in Beijing, inviting guests from the government, industry, university, and research field to discuss corporate compliance issues, jointly exploring new trends, challenges and opportunities, promoting internal compliance management, enhancing risk prevention awareness, and promoting high-quality development of enterprises to create a healthy market environment together
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4To become a Lead member, companies must set at least three out of the five common goals relevant to five topics.
5Engaged is defined as companies who have set a goal.
6'n/a' as circularity goal for each partner is defined individually thus incomparable between the companies.
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