BUS604: Innovation and Sustainability

Global Goal 17 explicitly recognises business as indispensable to "global partnership for sustainable development". Some businesses are already taking the Global Goals as serious signals of future policy and market direction: 2015 research by GlobeScan, a polling firm, found that one in three companies planned to use the Global Goals as input for setting corporate objectives. However, two thirds have yet to join them. 

This is perhaps not surprising. The Global Goals are an intergovernmental initiative. Some of the goals appear to lie beyond the scope or interest of companies. Many companies still view sustainable development as a corporate social responsibility (CSR), which they support through their CSR departments essentially to protect and build their reputation and reduce waste.

However, a growing number of companies, including those represented on this Commission, have already made the Global Goals for Sustainable Development a priority on their strategic agenda. This report argues that other company boards should do the same for two main reasons. First, business needs the Global Goals; they offer a compelling growth strategy for individual businesses, business generally and the world economy, one that opens up immense new market opportunities. Second, the Global Goals need business: unless private companies seize the market opportunities they open up and advance progress across the whole range of goals, neither business nor the rest of the world will gain all the benefits that stem from achieving the goals.

Achieving the Global Goals by 2030 is an ambitious vision. But for responsible, farsighted businesses, it's a vision that offers significant growth through solving the world's biggest problems (see Section 2). As more and more businesses choose that vision as their roadmap to growth, so general confidence in reaching the Global Goals will grow, creating powerful incentives for companies, governments and other stakeholders to plan and invest accordingly. As this unstoppable force gathers pace, so more companies will compete for the opportunities unlocked by creating a future that is environmentally stable and socially inclusive. Businesses anticipating that future in the strategic choices they make today are more likely to thrive. 

The world will still face many challenges in 2030. There will still be intense competition over resources; corruption won't have disappeared; the environment will still face risks; and social justice will likely be a major issue worldwide. But a world that has been pursuing the Global Goals will be better organised to address these challenges. More capital will be deployed in sustainable infrastructure. More innovation will be directed at environmentally stable solutions. Women will have gained much greater economic and social power and the benefits of trade will be more evenly spread, helping to strengthen further international cooperation.

Board executives don't have to choose this vision. But consider the alternatives. Over the next 15 years, like it or not, sustainability will become as big and disruptive in every sector as digital technologies have become over the past 15. Moreover, over the next 15 years, these two disruptive forces will increasingly converge. The majority of businesses successfully targeting sustainable market opportunities today are built on digital technologies (see Section 3.2). And digital industry groups and policymakers are collaborating already to see how and where digital technologies can speed progress towards the Global Goals and to develop enabling policy. In many sectors, this collaboration is likely to be a powerful driver of rapid change. In the energy sector, the combination of technical innovation, much of it digital, and long-term enabling regulation is making clean power and energy efficiency credible, rapidly scaling challengers to fossil fuel in countries around the world. In agriculture, digital solutions could drive up yields, cut food waste and transform water management.

Whatever drives it, when disruptive sustainability takes off in a sector, it can move very fast – as fast as new mobility service providers are changing transport systems today, leaving unprepared incumbents stranded. By the same token, companies that anticipate the disruption by prioritising the Global Goals in their strategic agenda today will also be driving the disruption to their competitive advantage.

If too few of them do and regulators respond too late, the burdens and costs of fault lines in the current model of development may grow until there is no longer a viable world to do business in. 

The Commission believes collective action is needed to deliver the Global Goals. Top-down initiatives won't work. All the actors in the world's markets need to work together on innovative solutions to the most pressing needs of society across the world. They need to scale sustainable markets by shaping the market conditions that will trigger a "race to the top" and unlocking the necessary finance. 

The rest of this report describes the major market opportunities opened up by achieving the Global Goals in Section 2, and how business leaders can capture and multiply those opportunities and build a better world in Section 3. Section 4 details changes to the financial system that will unlock investment needed to achieve the Global Goals. Section 5 shows how businesses can contribute to essential progress on the social goals and regain lost trust through a new social contract with civil society (including individual citizens as well as nongovernmental organisations) and governments. Section 6 proposes next steps for business leaders convinced by the business case for sustainable development and how this Commission plans to support them over the next year.