The global green business revolution is gaining momentum and changing how businesses operate. A new generation of business leaders and companies around the world, including Singapore, will face new challenges and opportunities along this sustainability journey.
What lies ahead for businesses is perhaps summed up best by Daniel Esty and David Lubin in their May 2010 Harvard Business Review article, The Sustainability Imperative, where they declared sustainability as an emerging megatrend similar to previous megatrends like quality, IT and globalisation.
Companies need to manage sustainability as a business megatrend and those with the right vision and execution to navigate the megatrend will come out ahead, while those that don’t will be swept aside.
Their thoughts on why sustainability is becoming a megatrend:
Why do we think sustainability qualifies as an emerging megatrend? Over the past 10 years, environmental issues have steadily encroached on businesses’ capacity to create value for customers, shareholders, and other stakeholders. Globalized workforces and supply chains have created environmental pressures and attendant business liabilities. The rise of new world powers, notably China and India, has intensified competition for natural resources (especially oil) and added a geopolitical dimension to sustainability. “Externalities†such as carbon dioxide emissions and water use are fast becoming material – meaning that investors consider them central to a firm’s performance and stakeholders expect companies to share information about them.
These forces are magnified by escalating public and governmental concern about climate change, industrial pollution, food safety, and natural resource depletion, among other issues. Consumers in many countries are seeking out sustainable products and services or leaning on companies to improve the sustainability of traditional ones. Governments are interceding with unprecedented levels of new regulation…
Further fueling this megatrend, thousands of companies are placing strategic bets on innovation in energy efficiency, renewable power, resource productivity, and pollution control. What this all adds up to is that managers can no longer afford to ignore sustainability as a central factor in their companies’ long-term competitiveness.
We prefer to call this sustainability megatrend as the green business revolution because fundamental shifts in mindsets and ways of doing business are required. These are uncertain times with many challenges but there will also be opportunities and winners. Business-as-usual will be overthrown by innovative and responsible business thinking.
Being a globalised and forward-looking city with connections between East and West, developed and developing, Singapore is in an excellent position to lead the green business revolution. But are businesses in Singapore ready?
To help the business community in Singapore, Green Business Singapore has recently revamped our website and aligned our editorial content to better face this green business revolution, with a focus on Strategy and Leaders, Operations and Culture, Design and Tech, and Marketing and CSR.
Green Business Singapore aims to be the leading online sustainability toolkit for businesses in Singapore, and shape the green business revolution in Singapore by inspiring businesses and providing them with the knowledge and tools.
We will chronicle environmental news in Singapore, highlight new sustainable business practices and case studies, showcase innovative companies and business leaders, and explore the tools and strategies for navigating the green business revolution.
Green Business Singapore is getting ready for the green business revolution in Singapore. Are you ready?
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