May 6th, 2009
by Will Sarni
I have known about Serious Materials for a while as they are one of my business examples of “sustainability driving innovation.”
In my opinion, sustainability is fueling innovation through the creation of new businesses and new products. This innovation is also driving the “creative destruction” of some industries (some of the Detroit automakers?) and creating new ones (Tesla and Better Place?).
This is obvious.
What is not so obvious is that the job creation from these new and in some cases disruptive industries is creating brand value.
In my opinion, Serious Materials is now known, not only as an …
Tagged: Green Jobs, Serious Materials, Sustainability, Vestas
Posted in Business, Green Jobs, Sustainability
April 13th, 2009
by Will Sarni
I participated in a panel discussion titled “Communicating the Business Value of Sustainability” at the Food Processing Environmental Conference in San Antonio a couple of weeks ago.
Tim Carey from PepsiCo (Director, Sustainability) participated on the panel and presented “Sustainability in a Recession: Keys to Performance in a Capital-Constrained Environment.”
Tim presented a very clear and concise case for aggressively pursuing a sustainability strategy in the “middle” of this economic downturn.
His key theme was that during the recession it is essential (yes, essential) to leverage sustainability to drive innovation and increase resource efficiency. Why, you ask, would this be critical during a …
Tagged: business value, PepsiCo, resource efficiency, supply chain, Sustainability
Posted in Business, Sustainability
March 12th, 2009
by Will Sarni
I am compelled to raise a voice and declare that we do not need a new color to describe sustainability. Doing so is an absurd exercise designed to fabricate a new marketing tag line and does nothing to communicate the value of sustainability to consumers and businesses.
Recent taglines regarding the “new colors of green” include:
“Blue is the New Green”, The New York Times. November 20, 2008
“Yellow is the New Green”, The New York Times. February 27, 2009
“Black is the New Green”, Financial Times. February 28, 2009
I will go further and recommend we jettison the words “green” and “eco” as more …
Tagged: ecomagination, green, greenwashing, new green, Sustainability, sustainability and value
Posted in Business, Sustainability
March 4th, 2009
by Will Sarni
We are once again in the midst of the creative destruction of industries. By way of background, the term “creative destruction” is from Joseph Schumpeter’s 1939 book, Business Cycles. He believed that business cycles were caused by innovation. Stu L. Hart and Mark B. Millstein in their 1999 article titled, “Global Sustainability and the Creative Destruction of Industries” (Sloan Management Review, ISSN 0019-848X, Vol. 41, Nº. 1, 1999) linked Schumpeter’s business concept of creative destruction to the business drivers of sustainability.
I agree with Hart and Millstein. A lot of people think that the current destruction we’re seeing is exclusively the …
Tagged: business drivers, carbon, global sustainability, Sustainability, water
Posted in Business, Sustainability
February 7th, 2009
by Will Sarni
I recently read an article in the journal, The American Scholar (Winter 2009) titled, “The Future of the American Frontier” that is worth sharing. I believe the author John Tirman, executive director and principal research scientist at the MIT Center for International Studies, touches on what may be one of the reasons sustainability has gained traction over the past couple of years (the other factor?).
Of course the business rationale for sustainability such as increasing brand value, new products and services, risk management and reduced operating costs compelled business such as GE and Wal-Mart to “be green.” However, why has sustainability …
Tagged: environmental technology, Sustainability, Sustainable
Posted in Business, Sustainability
