Sustainability Must Be Central To Corporate Strategy Now. It's too late to have it any other way.
Dean Krehmeyer, Michael Lenox and Brian Moriarty -- Forbes
Corporate America has been dramatically increasing its attention to and leadership in sustainability. Companies have been announcing plans for carbon-footprint reduction, publishing sustainability reports, creating billion-dollar clean energy investment funds and forming sustainability coalitions with corporate customers, suppliers and even competitors.
That's happened because investors and the public have been insisting that sustainability move beyond being a departmental concern and into the boardroom and executive offices. Yet a 2008 McKinsey survey found that while 60% of executives believed climate change is strategically important, fewer than a third were actually doing anything about it. Why the disconnect? Partly because it's all so new and complex.
Executives need to begin by understanding exactly why they're engaging in sustainability activities. There are three basic drivers of corporate sustainability initiatives: regulatory requirements, market incentives to go beyond those regulatory requirements and new market opportunities…
