Why Business Sustainability Sparks Innovation

Research shows that innovation will be essential for small businesses over the next decade as they try to thrive and survive by seizing new opportunities, improving their competitive position and providing more value to their customers.

Clients in our sustainability consulting ask, “What circumstances, frameworks or parameters need to be in place to spark creativity, ideas, and innovation in my business?"    The conversation of business sustainability answers that question. Business sustainability, defined as evaluating the environmental and social impacts of your business to long term profitability, is a vehicle to enable your business to meet your goals of profit, growth, and revenue while positively impacting the environment and social realms of your business.

Consider the following sustainable business strategies as a precursor to innovation in business:

•    Integrating a sustainability concept (recycling, paperless office, energy efficiency) that inspires you and is expressed via your business brings eco awareness to your workplace and also creates a space for innovation to occur within your operations by performing daily operations with an environmental mindset. Elements of environmental business attract commitment, energize employees, creates meaningful work, and positively impacts your business as well as the planet.
•    Customer connection translates as stakeholder engagement. Stakeholder engagement is a means to capture value through proactively acknowledging and addressing the underlying needs and concerns of those impacted by your business, product or service. A deep and direct relationship with the market and customers helps small businesses understand customer needs, identify new opportunities, and fix problems quickly and efficiently.
•    Open collaboration and information sharing combined with the competitive landscape of business drives innovation. Not only are improved products/ services defined, but also the formation of improved sustainable industry best practices, creation of similarly valued eco conscious companies and networks.   Businesses collectively working together can be a catalyst for supplier innovation as well.

Innovation will be essential for small businesses to thrive and survive over the next decade. Companies becoming more environmentally, socially and economically responsible are driving innovations in products, services and sourcing. Commitment to sustainability uncovers opportunities to explore, develop, collaborate, and innovate within your organization and your industry.