Sustainable Innovation in Times of Disruption: Choices for a Better Society
There are opportunities for progress all around us. The key is to innovate on these opportunities sustainably.
To help identify most effective path forward, you'll need to gain a global perspective to these challenges in an open discussion. How can Japan and the world take action to create a more sustainable, innovative world? Where do you fit in?
It's time to find out.
Businesses hoping to make positive impact on the future need a sustainable strategy. But the fundamentals of sustainability continue to elude many business leaders. Measuring sustainability in business practices is a long-term undertaking, especially in the fast-paced world of business.
Robin Lewis, representative director of Social Innovation Japan and cofounder of mymizu, shares how sustainability fits into business strategy in his GLOBIS Unlimited course Sustainable Business Models. Below is an excerpt of his insights on business ecosystem models and how the circular economy creates a stronger competitive advantage than the traditional linear economy model.
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Robin Lewis: I studied business at university, and I really have this strong passion to use business acumen, business principles, and business skills to help generate social and environmental impact.
As a consultant, I work with a lot of different companies to help innovate their business model to, of course, grow the financial performance, but also integrate larger social and environmental strategies into their core strategy. I also work with a lot of social entrepreneurs to help them plan their business models and help them to generate as much impact as possible.
Sustainable Innovation in Times of Disruption: Choices for a Better Society
There are opportunities for progress all around us. The key is to innovate on these opportunities sustainably.
To help identify most effective path forward, you'll need to gain a global perspective to these challenges in an open discussion. How can Japan and the world take action to create a more sustainable, innovative world? Where do you fit in?
It's time to find out.
When I think of a “business model,” I think of essentially how a company generates profit. And that’s often by mapping out the company’s core products or services, the target market for those products and services, and any expenses or investments required to make those things happen.
If we take a step back and we look at the role of business in society, every single business operates in an environmental sphere. The biosphere—the water that we use, the earth—all of these things that we need to generate products and services. We operate within a social system: the communities we work in, our employees. And we also work in a political system. So we have regulations, we have all of these different rules that we have to abide by.
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Linear vs. Circular Economy Model
Lewis: When I think of a sustainable business model versus a non-sustainable business model, I find it helps to think about what’s called a linear economy versus a circular economy. And this is one framework that helps me and some others to think about how to generate sustainable business models.
A linear economy is where we take, we make, and then we waste. For example, we take or extract oil from the ground. We make something like a plastic product, and then we waste it. So either in incineration like burning or we send it to the landfill.
So it’s very much extract, make something, and then throw it away.
When we look at the other approach, which is a circular economy, this is what I would argue and what many would argue is a much more sustainable business model. You don’t have to rely on finite resources.
To be concrete, there are three principles to a circular economy.
- To design out waste from the very inception of a product or service
- To keep materials in use for as long as possible
- To regenerate nature
To watch the rest of this course, Sustainable Business Models with Robin Lewis, visit GLOBIS Unlimited.
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