In “Why Sustainability is Now the Key Driver for Innovation“, a recent article in the Harvard Business Review Ram Nidumolu, C.K. Prahalad, and M.R. Rangaswami make the case that sustainability can become a key driver for improving value chain effectiveness, driving innovation and next practice development. Unfortunately, given the parameters they imply for “sustainability” there is little chance that the recommendations they make will actually be sustainable. They do, however, put together a solid set of five stages companies need to go through to take full advantage of the environmental aspects of sustainability:
- Viewing Compliance as Opportunity: Using the need to comply to not just react but to proactively shape regulation and pursue creative, collaborative solutions with other companies.
- Making Value Chains Sustainable: Building on compliance competencies to reduce the environmental footprint of the organization.
- Designing Sustainable Products and Services: Through compliance built competencies becoming more aware of how to apply environmental, eco-friendly principles to product and service design.
- Developing New Business Models: Seeking more collaborative approaches to doing and designing business models.
- Creating Next Practice Platforms: Exploring how to “close the loop” and create collaborative relationships across industries.
What they fail to take into consideration is that just focusing on being green and environmental impact is not sustainable. Sustainability is realized from a holistic and coherent approach to enriching and enhancing the entire Value Web: an interconnected and inter-related set of drivers that include areas like the environment, social support systems (such as education and healthy communities), infrastructure support (transportation and city planning for example), resource use and allocation and food production to name a few.
For “sustainability” to be sustainable it must be holistic in scope and systemic in application and impact. My advice: read the article but don’t limit your thinking to an “eco”, “green” or environmental scope. Think full-spectrum, think Value Web. That will get you sustainable.
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