Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
Blue business washes in
Green is good and blue is better.
Keeping a business sustainable – or blue – goes beyond philanthropic nods to the environment. It needs to be a core business goal, says Adam Werbach, creator of Wal-Mart’s sustainability program and chief executive of Saatchi & Saatchi S, the sustainability wing of the marketing and consultancy company.
Blue innovation embraces the social, cultural, and economic aspects of business along with green issues like protecting our last wild places and reducing carbon emissions.
“Sustainability is about long-term profitability. It doesn’t mean just the environment,” Werbach told a room of 100 business professionals in Toronto on Wednesday, pointing to the four-part breakdown of sustainability built on social, economic, cultural and environmental trends in addition to an integral value of transparency.
“The idea is to think a little bit broader. Of course we need to protect the environment, but there are so many other things to connect to it,” Werbach said, exploring a theme in his new book Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto.
“This is an extraordinary business opportunity that’s been left to the environmentalists and we need to steal it back and make it the business opportunity to grow companies that are going to be the companies of the future.”
Victoria Kamsler, chief ethics officer and research director at Greenfiniti Consulting and Investment in Toronto and former professor of environmental ethics at Princeton University, said Werbach was on to something with his ideas about internal changes in business culture having to do with transparency and engagement, and motivating employees to engage in purposes that align with their own values and ideals larger than themselves.
A Nightmare on Auto Street: Big boxes
When it comes to competition in the auto business, it’s the unknown that keeps the top U.S. Honda executive, John Mendel, up at night.
Mendel, speaking to the Reuters Auto Summit in Detroit, said he is always concerned about the conventional competitors. But what he is really afraid of is a company that “changes the game.”
“What keeps me up regarding new competition is someone significantly changing the game,” Mendel said.
People mention an autoseller taking up dealers dropped by General Motors, Chrysler or Saturn.
“What if they didn’t have a dealer network,” Mendel said. “What if they used big-box retailers and contracted with Jiffy Lube to have your car fixed?
“That could be a really new metric, which suddenly changes the whole cost structure for distribution significantly,” said the Honda executive.
That has been tried before, by Sears, in the 1950s, but was killed by the complex state franchise laws that protect dealership networks.
I agree with Scola – leave out the middlemen – they basically add no value.
repossessed cars
I believe I read somewhere that consumers were outraged to find out wal-mart actually has soda refrigerators. But now that the backlights have been replaced, it has held off the public boycott. Customers of wal-mart should begin to see an estimated .000000002345678910111213% difference in global temperatures by 2069. And a .00000777777775656565656566565656646464% price decrease because they feel they should pass the savings onto the consumers. I feel that with such ground breaking ideas as this one, we are on the road to a better more blueish green tomorrow!