http://www.environmentalleader.com/2008/02/01/major-corporations-cooperate-for-sustainability/ Environmental Leader Thu, 24 May 2012 16:26:26 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://www.environmentalleader.com/2008/02/01/major-corporations-cooperate-for-sustainability/comment-page-1/#comment-35495 Brendan Dunphy Mon, 04 Feb 2008 18:37:10 +0000 http://www.environmentalleader.com/2008/02/01/major-corporations-cooperate-for-sustainability/#comment-35495 These collaborative and industry-wide responses to the growing sustainability agenda are nothing more than fear-driven and defensive. They seek to maintain the status quo and the predictability stakeholders seek against what otherwise would be a major opportunity for increased competition or externally-driven disruption with new more sustainable business models and practices. The business models and product lines of many industries (think automotive as an example) have long exceeded their ‘sell-by date’ and require massive disruptive innovation in order to meet our future transportation needs in a sustainable fashion. The same is true of almost all other industry business models conceived in the ‘industrial era’, a pre-sustainability era where waste and inefficiency is acceptable because the market can bear it. Just as a rising tide lifts all ships, so these government aided and abetted industry initiatives will only serve to rise and sustain the very business models, thinking and attitudes that have got us into this position in the first place. Even worse, these initiatives will serve to kill, delay and obscure the sort of radical innovations we truly require in order to meet the global challenge of sustainability and ensure it benefits not just developed, but emerging and survival economies as well. Existing corporate leaders fear these fundamental shifts in the competitive landscape more than they fear their existing competitors; they would rather cooperate with the 'devil they know' than risk the consequences of termination in what they increasingly recognise as a major challenge to ‘business as usual’. These collaborative and industry-wide responses to the growing sustainability agenda are nothing more than fear-driven and defensive. They seek to maintain the status quo and the predictability stakeholders seek against what otherwise would be a major opportunity for increased competition or externally-driven disruption with new more sustainable business models and practices. The business models and product lines of many industries (think automotive as an example) have long exceeded their ‘sell-by date’ and require massive disruptive innovation in order to meet our future transportation needs in a sustainable fashion. The same is true of almost all other industry business models conceived in the ‘industrial era’, a pre-sustainability era where waste and inefficiency is acceptable because the market can bear it. Just as a rising tide lifts all ships, so these government aided and abetted industry initiatives will only serve to rise and sustain the very business models, thinking and attitudes that have got us into this position in the first place. Even worse, these initiatives will serve to kill, delay and obscure the sort of radical innovations we truly require in order to meet the global challenge of sustainability and ensure it benefits not just developed, but emerging and survival economies as well. Existing corporate leaders fear these fundamental shifts in the competitive landscape more than they fear their existing competitors; they would rather cooperate with the ‘devil they know’ than risk the consequences of termination in what they increasingly recognise as a major challenge to ‘business as usual’.

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