Open Sustainability Innovation

One of the arguments put forward in Sustainability Marketing: A Global Perspective is that companies need a new, more strategic, long-term and open approach to thinking about sustainability and innovation. Conventional strategic thinking, popularised by Michael Porter and Claas van der Linde in their 1995 Harvard Business Review article ‘Green and Competitive’, is that green innovations will allow companies to generate a competitive advantage and more effectively market themselves to those customers who are concerned about the environment. Such thinking would naturally encourage companies to innovate competitively and keeping tight control of their intellectual property, since gaining an advantage over their competitors was a prime objective. From a sustainability perspective however, such thinking is far from ideal. One company innovatively improving their products, production processes or business model is a good thing, but substantive progress towards sustainability will depend upon whole industries changing and innovating... read more