Sustainability-driven innovation goes beyond designing green products and packaging solely on their inherent virtue. It entails improving business operations and processes to become more efficient, with a goal of dramatically reducing costs and waste. It’s also about insulating a business from the risk of resource price shocks and shortages. Taken together these enhancements can deliver business benefits that go far beyond the bottom line—whether it’s improving the overall carbon footprint, enhancing the brand image or engaging employees in a more profound way.
Often, there are significant opportunities for organizations to use sustainability to drive innovation and improve how they do business. A methodical analysis can highlight areas ripe for attention. Taking it a step further, that analysis may yield even greater benefits if it is extended beyond the company’s own walls through collaboration with suppliers, customers and alliance partners. Changes to each link in the supply chain can affect everything upstream and downstream and create financial benefits for everyone involved.
To reach this new frontier, leading organizations are taking a hard look inside their operations and across their supply chains, assessing where they are, prioritizing initiatives, and then formulating a broad sustainability strategy to foster product and process innovation to achieve their goals. They are also adopting metrics that more accurately measure their progress and improve their image in the marketplace. Companies that achieve this vision have the opportunity to enhance revenue and brand value, engage effectively with key stakeholders, manage risks and reduce costs.
To learn more, read the complimentary article reprint “Sustainability 2.0: Using sustainability to drive business innovation and growth” in Deloitte Review, Issue 10, January 2012. The article is also available for reading online.
