Changing the Game: How Business Innovations Reduce the Impact of Disasters
Changing the Game: How Business Innovations Reduce the Impact of Disasters is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s annual disaster case study report, examining how the private sector is becoming an integral part of disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. Drawing on the premise that major disasters—from Hurricane Andrew and Katrina to the Haiti earthquake, Boxing Day tsunami, and Tohoku earthquake—have historically driven systemic change, the report asks whether meaningful progress can happen without waiting for catastrophe. Over the past 15 years, the Foundation’s Corporate Citizenship Center has worked to close a long-standing gap: the insufficient integration of the business community into the broader disaster management system, spanning small business preparedness and recovery, critical infrastructure protection, and the strategic deployment of corporate expertise and donations.
The report catalogs innovative approaches companies are taking to prepare themselves and their communities for disasters and to contribute skills and resources across all phases of relief and recovery. It organizes these game-changing solutions into five themes: firsthand stories from those impacted by disasters and how they recovered; how companies plug into the complex broader disaster management structure; case studies of overcoming specific operational challenges, with shared insights and best practices; “beyond cash” solutions such as skills-based volunteering and strategic in-kind donations; and effective approaches to channeling employee engagement in the aftermath of disasters. Together, these stories demonstrate the substantial, real-world outcomes businesses can achieve when they are meaningfully integrated into disaster systems.