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Brain Circuits
Do you know the 5 steps to make money on sustainability?
Leaders, strategists, and decision-makers can play a pivotal role in integrating sustainability into business strategies – and make money in the process. Knut Haanaes, Bryony Jansen van Tuyll, and Øystein D. Fjeldstad outline five steps to make it happen.
1. Identify the business models through which you create value
Are you developing smaller or larger mass or custom products? Are you helping customers by providing knowledge and solving problems? Are you providing services through sharing economics? Or are you enabling the flow of goods, finances, or people?
2. Determine the commercial drivers in sustainability
When working on products, consider your materials, designs, and suppliers. If you are a knowledge provider, your levers are knowledge and people. For companies providing shared access to resources, it’s critical to reach many customers and for them to be aware of the benefits of shared resources over products. Network companies can have the most impact by addressing the flows they enable and the infrastructure they rely on.
3. Identify where you have the greatest commercial impact
Do you want to lower your environmental footprint or develop products and services to address societal challenges? Explore ways to improve your product designs, upskill your workforce, raise awareness, or redesign your network flows.
4. Seek collaboration partners
Meeting sustainability challenges requires multifaceted solutions. Whatever your business model, partners will be necessary to develop better products, services, and systems. These partners can be suppliers, customers, outside experts, governments, non-governmental organizations, or competitors.
5. Identify opportunities to maximize impact
As you gain more clarity about your sustainability goals, opportunities will arise to have greater impact – which could mean adopting new business models. Traditional product companies might move into resource-sharing or leverage their built-up skills to provide consulting services. Likewise, sharing companies might develop sustainable products to serve their customers better.
Key takeaway
Aligning your business model with sustainability isn’t just a choice: it’s a necessary commercial decision. Analyzing how your business creates value is the beginning of the journey. Whatever your route, there are many opportunities to have positive impact.
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