“How Green Will Save Us.”

It wasn’t as much the topic as the title of the September 2009 Harvard Business Review issue: How Green Will Save Us.
The environment has emerged as a topic of business operations with mainstream eco-concerns starting to emerge. The Review’s September issue gave me the green light to consider again the implications of consumers’ growing concerns about the sustainability of the environment on businesses in our industry.
The article “Why Sustainability is Now the Key Driver of Innovation” by R. Nidumolu, C.K. Prahalad and M. R. Rangaswami (Vol. 87, No. 9) gave me several things to think about, including how “green” will impact businesses. The authors suggest that “There is no alternative to sustainable development” despite the lack of commitment to become more eco-friendly on the part of still so very many businesses. More companies are adapting their operations to become more environmentally, socially and financially sustainable.
 Still a majority of firms appear skeptical at best and indignant at worst. Why should a company change if it isn’t legislated? How about because it is the right thing to do? Or because future business may depend on the real color of green your company really is.
Read more here.