Sustainability Thinking... THE Driver for Resiliently Profitable Innovation! Many CEOs, are struggling to connect sustainability / CSR / Green with innovation and improving profitability. This 2013 Accenture UN Global Compact survey highlights how many dont yet see how much the world has changed. CEOs increasingly know why sustainability is important, but they largely dont understand the deep connection between sustainability thinking and solving their increasingly pressing innovation and profitability problems. Why have the traditional approaches to innovation become old school, unreliable and risky? What has changed is the ever growing impact on business opportunity and risk of the global mega-forces of change. The global mega-forces of change and opportunity all come from outside this typical profit-first business sphere. Mega-forces such as climate change, energy, population, materials and water scarcity, wealth and income inequality, and food security. As a result, these global mega-forces are ignored by old school approaches. They are a new and largely untapped source for innovation and profitability. Start-ups, small, medium and large businesses are already starting to out perform in their markets because they are now tapping into this new source of resilient profitable innovation. Engage Employees Lastly, the old school profit-first approach to innovation means employees and other key stakeholders cant live their deepest held human values in their working lives. We are told everyday that only innovations that reduce costs or increase revenues are good - even when we know they will harm us, our families, communities, countries and the world - upon which we ultimately depend. This creates significant individual barriers to engaging with the old school approach innovation. These old approaches create pain as individuals experience the disconnect between their values and what they need to do to undertake their jobs. In turn employees dis-engage, their health is impacted, as is the companies performance, as ultimately the best employees leave (incurring disruption, re-hiring, re-training and reputational losses and costs). Future Fit Business - its Simply Better What is a better approach to resilient profitable innovation that manages traditional and mega-force risk and engages employees? How can a business innovate sustainably so it is resilient and always fit for the future? The mega-forces combine diverse economic, social and environmental factors that together create a huge variety of new opportunities and risks. Creating a process of innovation that will systematically take advantage of the opportunities and minimize the risks, through a process of innovation, requires: Understanding these factors and New innovation tools that can help integrate the innovations into new and improved business models. Businesses that do this successfully over time will simply be better, becoming future fit. They will be: - Resiliently profitable: They reliably provide genuine wealth to all stakeholders - including a reliable financial return to shareholders. - Systematically aware of and mitigate risks from all sources: They resiliently face change from all quarters. - Aligned with deep human values: They will have a mission and vision that enables them to behave authentically with all stakeholders, enabling all of them to be genuinely and sustainably innovative. As a result, such better businesses proactively contribute to a resilient sustainable environment, society and economy. They create the possibility that human and other life can flourish on this planet forever.
Posted on: Fri, 04 Jul 2014 01:08:12 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015