Organisations that wish to grow profitably in the future must focus their efforts to benefit shareholders, society and the environment simultaneously. Concentrating on any one of these areas at the expense of the other two may compromise a business’s long-term success. A focus on sustainability provides the best means to implement this triple-pronged strategy simultaneously, enabling organisations to innovate, differentiate themselves and succeed.
These are the key conclusions of a new paper published by a group of international academic experts on corporate responsibility and sustainability, which offers a new approach to how sustainability can build innovation and global collaboration across organisations.
The paper, “A New Mindset for Corporate Sustainability”, was sponsored by Cisco and BT and draws from the knowledge of respected institutions in China, Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom and United States.
“BT and Cisco wanted to jointly create a project on a topic both companies felt strongly about. Also, we wanted it to be truly global, combining the technology solutions and infrastructure that we market together. We think that the academics' findings bring into clear focus the challenges facing BT, Cisco and other companies around the world. Not only should we make sustainability an integral part of our strategies, but doing this will make our companies better and more competitive as a result,” said Francois Barrault, CEO, BT Global Services.
In the paper, the academics offer business leaders concise advice based on a systematic appraisal of case studies, including Cemex, Marks & Spencer and Shenzhen Water, and prevailing academic thinking on the subject worldwide. The paper also outlines the 10 steps required for organisations to become sustainability-driven innovators.
Offering a new approach, which the academics have named S²AVE (Shareholder and Social Added Value with Environmental Restoration), emphasises the role of sustainability in increasing innovation across the business and maintains that sustainability should be a strategy rather than an objective. It concludes that the achievement of sustainability goals does not require extensive re-engineering of the corporate structure. Instead, it requires conviction and vision at the very highest levels of the organisation so that a set of values coherent with corporate responsibility and sustainability are instilled throughout.
“The method by which this paper was produced gave all of us a unique opportunity to share views and collaborate in an entirely new way. Crucially, our ability to share experiences from around the globe enabled us to identify the importance of courageous, visionary leadership in achieving innovation through sustainability. The paper shows how, with the right direction, organisations can harness sustainability to open up and take the lead in markets that would otherwise have remained closed to them, securing their long-term future as they do so,” said Professor Sarah Slaughter of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“Our conclusion is that the ‘triple bottom line’ should no longer be a tangential activity, with shareholder value the main consideration. Instead, strategies should be focused on all three areas simultaneously as an integrated system because, as our case studies demonstrate, each strand can yield benefits for the other two.” |
