This is how to really make sustainability part of your strategy
A sustainable strategy: from perspectives to choices
More and more companies are recognising the importance of sustainability and including it in their strategy. Many, for example, use the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for this purpose, but according to the WEF only 0.2% of companies actually act accordingly. If you really want to incorporate sustainability into your strategy and make good investment choices, look at the following 3 areas:
- Your own value stream from supplier to user
- The ecosystem in which your products and services operate
- Sustainable disruption for radical improvement in both value creation and sustainability
These 3 areas help you look beyond the usual suspects you often see in sustainability (reasoned from Life Cycle Analysis) Now what if we were to use Porter's 5 forces here to look at those areas to arrive at a richer portfolio of improvement opportunities?
Your own value stream (1,2,3):
First, we look at your own value stream: yourself, your suppliers and your customers. Besides analysing where your biggest sustainability challenges are, it also pays huge dividends to see what you can learn from your most sustainable competitors.
Suppliers are in many cases part of the answer to the challenges above. Here, you can choose to a) switch to sustainable alternatives or b) work in co-creation with your suppliers to improve.
The end station (in many cases) is the customer/end user. By looking closely at how you influence their behaviour, even more sustainability is within reach. After all, sometimes sustainability will also lead to a growth in consumption, with which previous improvements end up paying nothing.
The ecosystem (4):
Your value stream lies in an ecosystem and will often be used in combination with other products and services. For instance, a house is always linked to a mortgage, of course, but so are paint, laminate and garden plants. And hotels are often used in combination with real estate, interiors, food & drink, taxi services and air travel. So sometimes most improvement potential is actually in the ecosystem rather than your own business model. Map this ecosystem and find strategic partnerships to make a positive contribution beyond your direct service.
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Sustainable disruption (5):
The last pillar to be addressed in your strategy is sustainable disruption. This is the danger of startups and innovations that radically deliver more total value (ecological, social and financial), among others. Make sure you invest in potential fast developments and choose a leader or follower role for slower developments.
More info? Please contact Pieter van der Boog
pieter.vanderboog@elementalstrategy.com
+31614809834
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