HyperQuake strategists continue to participate in a 13-week webinar entitled “Sustainability Boot Camp” hosted by Sustainable Life Media. In the third session, William Sarni, CEO of DOMANI, presented his thoughts on the topic “Innovation Opportunities in Response to Today’s Environmental Hot Buttons: Climate Change, Water & Waste.”
In his presentation, Sarni points out that 2009 will be marked as the year when sustainability went mainstream–the year where the old paradigm of abundant materials and limitless energy was openly (and successfully) challenged by environmental and social performance. Large opportunity areas such as Revenue, Risk Management and Reduced Operating Costs expose business opportunities as not simply about compliance.
In a September 2009 exclusive, Newsweek released their first annual Green Score Rankings. In it, a strong correlation between Green performers is made to companies that are successful overall. It summarizes that sixteen out of eighteen companies with high green scores had a 10-15% better stock performance than peers. This information suggests that perhaps voluntary sustainability isn’t really voluntary anymore- both in terms of business success and critic review.
Innovation for sustainability is really no different, then, than other realms of innovation and very similar to HQ’s own definition and approach to innovation. It requires foresight, open collaboration, creativity and discipline. It’s about taking risks, accepting failure and knowing that true innovation is about improvement, not efficiency.