DUBAI: Organizations that wish to grow profitably in the future must focus their efforts to benefit shareholders, society and the environment simultaneously, said experts.
Concentrating on any one of these areas at the expense of the other two may compromise a business’s long-term success, they added. A focus on sustainability provides the best means to implement this triple-pronged strategy simultaneously, enabling organizations to innovate, differentiate themselves and succeed.
These are the key conclusions of “A New Mindset for Corporate Sustainability, a new paper published by a group of international academic experts on corporate responsibility and sustainability.
The report, sponsored by Cisco and BT, offers a new approach to how sustainability can build innovation and global collaboration across organizations.
Drawn from institutions in China, Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom and United States, 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 organizations 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.
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 organization so that a set of values coherent with corporate responsibility and sustainability are instilled throughout.
Professor Sarah Slaughter of Massachusetts Institute of Technology said: “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, organizations 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.
“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, she said.
Phil Smith, VP for technology marketing at Cisco, added, “It’s essential that sustainability is at the heart of the strategic direction that businesses and organisations need to follow. The ability to collaborate across virtual teams, globally, will be the practical step to make this direction a reality. As this ‘world-first’ project demonstrates, it is possible to create deep, innovative thinking across global teams using innovative new collaboration tools such as TelePresence.
The ten steps for sustainable innovation agreed upon by the team are as follows:
1. Make innovating for sustainability a part of your company’s vision 2. Formulate a strategy with sustainability at its heart
3. Embed sustainability in every part of your business
4. Walk the talk
5. Set up a body with the power to make sustainability matter
6. Set firm rules
7. Bring your stakeholders on board
8. Use people power
9. Join the networks
10. Think beyond reporting: Align all business systems with the company’s vision of sustainability
