Sustainability: business, life, environment

A common characteristic across sustainable organizations is the ability to recognize public eco awareness and deliver new products that address societal and environmental challenges in a way that delivers business sustainability and long term value.  However, questions still remain unanswered on the most effective way to harness and drive creativity in an increasingly transparent but equally competitive world.

The Harvard Business Review recently weighed in on the “open” debate with its post, Open Innovation and Organizational Boundaries.  Commenting that today’s markets are being transformed into social forums, the article offers some key concepts to consider:

• Leaders and senior teams can take advantage of contrasting innovation modes, paradoxical organizational requirements, and associated dynamic boundaries.

• Leaders need to execute strategic choices with the systems, structures, incentives, cultures, and boundaries tailored to open and firm-based innovation modes.

• Multiple types of boundaries will increasingly be employed to manage innovation. These boundaries will range from traditional intra firm boundaries to complex intra firm boundaries (such as ambidextrous designs), to webs of interdependence with partners, and to interdependence with potentially anonymous communities.

• Senior teams must build their own personal capabilities to deal with contradictions as well as their firm's ability to deal with contradictions. While building internally contradictory organizational architectures is difficult, building these architectures to attend to contrasting innovation modes will be more challenging.

Through our direct engagement with companies and business leaders seeking to inspire and motivate sustainable action in their organization, we find business stakeholders as a valued source for new ideas. Our professional consulting works with clients to step outside of the confines of the business to leverage employee, supplier, and end consumer thinking.  

Taiga Company offers insight into business sustainability programs and social media strategies designed to encourage business sustainability and expand eco awareness as an asset of the organization - particularly through stakeholder engagement and open innovation.