Chapter 5 - Industrial Approaches to Sustainability

Part 5 - Managing for Sustainability

"Population growth and economic development are resulting in increasing pressure on the environment and climate.  We are approaching a tipping point at which the issue's importance to business performance and investors will escalate. The equity market is only just beginning to reflect the magnitude of change that lies ahead."
- Goldman Sachs, 2009

Navigating that change will most certainly require creativity, innovation, and adaptability in an arena of increasing challenge and a survival requirement for organizational resilience. Small and large businesses alike will find themselves in increasingly accelerating adaptive cycles, the transformational panarchy of the next generation of our global economy, where resource availability, product requirements, and the systems ecology of business and economics will be very different – more heterarchical with even more rapidly evolving, metastable systems of multiple interrelated elements. Our future will be a future where companies can grow and sustain their business, only if they act sustainably.

Keywords

  • embracers
  • cautious adopters
  • sustainability management
  • lean manufacturing
  • energy efficiency
  • green living megatrend
  • measuring intangibles
  • competitive advantage
  • reputation

Suggested Reading

  1. Sustainability: 'Embracers' Seize the Advantage (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2011)