BUS604: Innovation and Sustainability

• What is innovation in products and services?
• What is social and environmental sustainability?
• How can innovation and sustainability be combined?
  

For a business to remain competitive, innovation is essential to remain relevant in the marketplace. Innovation is the bringing of something new and desirable to customers. Today, innovation requires a focus on improving products and services and the social and environmental effects of how they are designed, produced, and delivered. Sustainability considers the needs of the present and future generations by creating value across the triple bottom line: people, planet, and profits. The combination of these concepts is referred to as sustainable innovation.

Traditional business practices adopted the mindset that the global commons were limitless. The global commons are the oceans, atmosphere, Antarctica, outer space, and environmental assets that support the planet's health, such as land, forests, and freshwater. Today, businesses recognize the interconnectedness of the commons and that global cooperation is necessary to preserve these valuable resources to achieve environmental sustainability. Likewise, social sustainability, or the bettering of opportunities for people to prosper, is essential for societies and businesses to thrive.
 
To review, see An Economic Case for Protecting the Planet, Introduction to Sustainable Business, and Sustainability Innovation in Business.

• What does it mean to be a sustainable business?
• How can businesses take action to advance social and environmental well-being?
• How do worldviews and values affect sustainability outcomes?
  

Sustainable businesses seek innovative breakthroughs that enhance the well-being of societies and the planet. To succeed, businesses adopt practices and processes such as biomimicry (innovation inspired by nature), circular economy (a model of production and consumption that promotes zero waste), life cycle design (integrating sustainability into the product design and life cycle), and more. These practices reflect systems thinking and considering how one action has a positive or negative effect on another, versus linear thinking represented by straight-line take-make-waste approaches.

Sustainability requires a paradigm shift from the drive for profits that appease shareholders, such as investors, to multi-value creation that works for all stakeholders, represented by those that can either affect or be affected by the actions and outcomes of an organization. The shift is seen as a change in worldviews and values from a competitive "winner takes all" approach to one where collaboration and knowledge sharing across industries and supply chains are preferred.

To review, see:

• The Science of Sustainability
  
• Framing Sustainability Innovation and Entrepreneurship
• Biomimicry in Action
• The Food Systems Approach
  
• The Supply Chain
  
• The Circular Economy: From a Linear to a Circular Economy

• How is unsustainability an ethical issue?
• What ethical responsibilities do businesses have when producing and marketing goods?
• What roles do businesses have in creating equity and wellbeing?
  

Businesses today are caught in an ethical production-consumption paradox. The traditional way to grow a business is to reduce costs in the production process or increase consumer consumption. Cost-cutting has contributed to unsustainability by using cheaper ways to create goods, leading to more pollution and low wages. Consumer consumption has led to more waste in landfills and throughout the global commons. The ethical challenge for businesses is to "do well by doing good" with sustainable innovation as a driver of business strategy. Doing well refers to economic viability or generating profits, while doing good refers to promoting equity, inclusion, diversity, fair wages, health, wellness, biodiversity, clean air, and safe water. We can even go as far as to say that sustainability is ethical business.

To review, see Sustainability Innovation in Business, Marketing and Sustainability: Business as Usual or Changing Worldviews?, and Case Study: Exploratory Assessment of Sustainability Capability of Textile and Apparel Corporations in China.

Unit 1 Vocabulary

This vocabulary list includes terms you will need to know to successfully complete the final exam.

• biomimicry
• carbon footprint
• circular economy
• global commons
• innovation
• life cycle design
• linear thinking
• multi-value creation
• social sustainability
• sustainability
• sustainable innovation
• systems thinking
• triple bottom line