Unit 2: Sustainability Policies, Practices, and Leadership
Innovation and sustainability initiatives can be found at multiple levels of governments and organizations, from global, regional, and local, and across industries and sectors. This unit explores the regulatory environment, sustainability frameworks, organizational leadership, and related policies and practices.
Completing this unit should take you approximately 21 hours.
Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- identify policies and practices that address social, environmental, and sustainability issues such as laws, agreements, frameworks, and certifications;
- appraise the results and impacts of innovation combined with sustainability policies and practices such as product improvements and economic outcomes; and
- recognize social and environmental ethical issues, such as equity, wellbeing, production and consumption, arising from innovation and sustainability policies and practices.
2.1: Public Policy and Sustainability Practices
Our planet provides shared resources, known as the global commons, that belong to everyone. Governments play an essential role in deciding how these resources are valued and create policies to help manage them. Since sustainability policies can either benefit or hinder economic, environmental, and societal success, it is essential to understand the policy-making process and ways to influence it proactively.
Read this chapter to find out more about the interplay between individuals, organizations, and governments in shaping public policy.
How are policies influenced? What factors affect the policy-making process? How does public policy affect innovation and sustainability practices?
Due to macroeconomic resource constraints, the traditional view is that governments must consider tradeoffs between economic output and environmental protection. However, leaders who promote 21st-century views show that a nation can have both. What are the potential challenges and rewards of choosing prosperity and the planet? How do societal values influence our choices?
Sustainable energy is a global issue. In this wide-ranging interview on the future of energy with the former CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, he argues that a shared international vision is needed to bring governments and industry together to manage innovation processes and make renewable energy commercially viable. Read this chapter to learn how visionary leadership can bring forth genuine innovations in energy sources and systems.
Why is it difficult to reach consensus at the international level? What roles do global sustainability frameworks and international organizations play in helping to shape policies?
2.2: Sustainability Frameworks and Certifications
Since the need for sustainability is universal, organizations have made tremendous efforts to create sustainability frameworks and certifications that set goals for improved practices, methods for measuring progress, and rating systems to identify achievements. This section reviews some of the most important frameworks and certifications being used today.
2.2.1: U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
In 2015, leaders from 193 UN member countries came together and announced an ambitious set of global goals to transform our world. Known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), these 17 goals are a call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and improve everyone's lives and prospects as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Today, progress is being made in many places, but action to meet the SDGs is not advancing at the speed or scale required. This section evaluates some strategic tools available to support organizations engaging with the SDGs.
How can goal conflict within the SDGs work against one another? What are the opportunities to achieve the SDGs by 2030 within planetary boundaries?
This video discusses how we can build a robust future without wrecking the planet using the Earth3 model. This new methodology combines the UN SDGs with the nine planetary boundaries, beyond which the earth's vital systems could become unstable. Watch this talk to learn more about the five transformational policies that could help us achieve the SDGs while keeping the earth stable and resilient.
How can goal conflict within the SDGs work against one another? What are the opportunities to achieve the SDGs by 2030 within planetary boundaries?
2.2.2: The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) produces globally recognized sustainability reporting frameworks and offers tools to help organizations set goals, measure progress, and manage sustainability performance. Read this article that gives an overview of the GRI and its reporting guidelines.
How does an organization begin to approach measuring sustainability improvements? How can these be compared to other organizations and communicated with transparency and trust to stakeholders?
Over the last decade, there has been a proliferation of sustainability indexes and frameworks. This report attempts to bring greater alignment between actors and better ways to measure progress using our planet's health and people's well-being as the yardstick, rather than Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or profit alone. Read the report to learn how sustainability is measured at government, business, and societal levels, and how it can be aligned to the triple bottom line (people, planet, profit) and the SDGs.
2.2.3: Green Business Council Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)
LEED, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is the most widely used green building rating system in the world. Read this article, which gives an overview of green building rating systems, including LEED, and their environmental transparency levers.
2.3: International Organizations as Leaders in Innovation and Sustainability
How do we take carefully-crafted global goals and aspirations and make them a reality on the global, regional, and local levels? How do we align government policies with real-world business applications to bring sustainable innovation into reality and transform our world? As you can imagine, this is a large and unwieldy process, but all change begins with first steps, and many steps add up to big changes.
Read this report, which demonstrates the business case for the SDGs and the US$12 trillion a year market opportunity available to companies that embrace the mission and lead with a strategic vision.
This article discusses how one company, Novozymes, successfully aligned its purpose, strategy, and long-term targets directly with the SDGs. Novozymes says the SDGs are a gift to business because the economic rewards for delivering on the SDGs are very significant. Read this article to find out more about Novozyme's journey to SDG alignment and its many benefits.
2.3.1: Multilateral Government Initiatives
Because of climate change, the Arctic is transitioning to an ice-free future that will open new trade routes and exploit the polar region's vast natural resources amid the receding ice pack. Russia, Norway, Denmark, Canada, the United States, and international organizations are all vying to access these resources. Read the qualitative analysis in this chapter to explore the complexities of international treaties that govern the Arctic and the prospects of innovative multilateral agreements.
How does the changing landscape create a need for political and environmental balance? What are some new opportunities for businesses, economies, and human development?
2.3.2: International Business Practices
In 2009, the multinational company Unilever adopted a new strategic vision that integrated societal and environmental responsibilities. The company's Sustainable Living Plan was the center of this strategy. This plan aims to help more than a billion people improve their health and wellbeing, decouple Unilever's growth from its environmental impact, increase its social impact, and enhance the livelihoods of all those involved in its supply chain. Read this chapter to discover how Unilever merged sustainability with profitable growth.
What steps did Unilever take to re-engineer the company and implement the Sustainable Living Plan successfully? How did sustainable innovation play a role in helping Unilever achieve its goals? What were the results?
You might not expect the chief operating officer of a major global corporation to look too far beyond either the balance sheet or the bottom line. Watch this talk, where the COO of Unilever makes the argument that including value, purpose, and sustainability in top-level decision-making is not just savvy; it's the only way to run a 21st-century business responsibly.
How can selling soap change lives? How can businesses make money and do good? How can company values lead to improvements in societal shared value?
2.4: Regional Organizations as Leaders in Innovation and Sustainability
Sustainability practices require efforts to be made at all levels, and ideally in alignment with global goals. Regional organizations and leaders are best-suited to determine the most important goals for their populations. This section explores regional government, business, and industry achievements and challenges for advancing the wellness of people and the planet by creating greater prosperity.
2.4.1: Regional Government Initiatives
This case analysis shows how inter-organizational collaborations can lead to improvements in policymaking and real-world outcomes. It looks at how the Healthy Ageing Network Northern Netherlands (HANNN) was created as a 'triple-helix' network organization with partners in research institutes, government bodies, and businesses.
How can more collaborations like this lead to sustainable innovation for societies?
2.4.2: Regional Businesses and Industry Practices
Read this chapter to learn about a family-owned dredging and marine engineering business that has managed to survive and prosper over 150 years due to entrepreneurial ingenuity and continued commitment to its people and environmental sustainability. It takes you through the company's evolution and the challenges of being profitable and responsible while aiming to achieve four SDGs.
As a marine dredging and engineering company, what challenges does Van Oord face in attempting to be profitable and protect the environment? How does the company leadership and culture inspire entrepreneurial ingenuity?
2.5: Local Communities and Individuals as Leaders in Innovation and Sustainability
Creating a better world requires a combination of top-down and bottom-up initiatives. Community sustainability is the ability of communities, leaders, and citizens to use resources wisely to meet needs today and in the future. In this section, you will explore real-world examples demonstrating what it means to "think globally and act locally" when designing and implementing sustainability programs at the community level.
2.5.1: Local Community Initiatives
Read this guidebook, which explores smart cities through a lens that promotes citizens as the driving force of urban innovation. It presents different models of smart cities that show how citizen-centric methods can mobilize resources to respond innovatively to challenges in governance. The living lab approach encourages agile development and the rapid prototyping of ideas in a decentralized and user-centric manner. How can mayors and public administrators create partnerships that drive value in their communities through citizen-driven innovation? How can sustainability be integrated into municipal strategies and solutions? How can city leaders join forces to learn and network globally?
2.5.2: Individual Entrepreneurs and Small Business Practices
Communities of entrepreneurs create positive social, environmental, and economic changes in local communities. Creative community spaces (CCSs), which are physical spaces that encourage innovation by bringing entrepreneurs and start-ups together, are at the center of these changes. This article showcases a selection of 13 CCSs worldwide that contribute to building a sustainable and entrepreneurial community while helping advance industry-specific and sectoral issues. How can creative community spaces support sustainable innovation from the root level? What are some best practices in creating entrepreneurial ecosystems that lead to sustainable innovation and local impact?
2.6: Ethics Related to Innovation and Sustainability Policies and Practices
Leaders in sustainability must make connections between the SDGs, climate change, the circular economy, the new economy, and the moral dimension to create a responsible society. This section explores the ethical and moral aspects of sustainability and innovation.
Read this interview with one former Prime Minister of the Netherlands, who shares insights into the evolution of sustainable innovation and government programs.
How do the sustainability themes in this course lead to a responsible and moral society? How do leadership behaviors and long-term thinking support environmental and societal success?
View this video, which introduces the footprint of individuals, companies, and other organizations. It sheds light on how footprints on society and the environment can be both positive and negative. Currently, we are collectively living in an unsustainable way, causing an ecological debt to future generations. Since companies are part of the problem and can be part of the solution, we need to reduce negative side effects and increase positive side effects through innovation.
How do footprints help us understand our sustainability problems and challenges? How can innovation move us into a more sustainable future? How are footprints an ethical issue individually and collectively?
Study Sessions
These study sessions are an excellent way to review what you've learned so far and are presented by the professor who created the course. Watch these as you work through the unit and prepare to take the final exam.
We also recommend reviewing this Study Guide before taking the Unit 2 Assessment.
Unit 2 Assessment
- Receive a grade
Take this assessment to see how well you understood this unit.
- This assessment does not count towards your grade. It is just for practice!
- You will see the correct answers when you submit your answers. Use this to help you study for the final exam!
- You can take this assessment as many times as you want, whenever you want.