Corporate strategy Study


Bravery pays dividends


Last year, Earthshine established a major research project to improve awareness of best practice and the positive business case for change. Michael Townsend reports on the emerging initial insights


A


business that is sustainable in absolute terms may not yet truly exist, but there are a number of companies blazing a trail – going beyond the rhetoric and innovating in some interesting ways to deliver a real impact. We want to understand what these businesses are doing, how their approaches really work and why, and to establish if there is a causal link between the integration of sustainability principles and the generation of superior business performance.


But of course we need to know what ‘good’ might look like before we can form any judge- ments on the businesses we examine. We all know the high level definitions for sustainable development, but this body of work needs to be translated into something tangible and mean- ingful for business strategies and operations. The concept of sustainable business covers so many different facets and situations; it can tend to mean all things to all people.


A good deal of work was therefore undertak- en to develop best practice models for what a sustainable business might look like, how it might function in moving towards zero adverse impact, while concurrently delivering superior business performance. A number of concepts were integrated within this process, drawing


from both business and sustainability schools of thought. This provided us with a robust and integrated framework for analysis and learning. We then set out on the search for exemplar cases by trawling through CR reports of the top UK companies, various indices, press articles, desk research and ‘word of mouth’. Around fifty cases of interest were identified, narrowed down to a short-list of ten for more detailed consideration. While we would not suggest these cases are anywhere near representative, they do at least provide a useful insight at this stage of the project into the different aspects of sustainable business practice found in the UK. For Stage 2, we are aiming to cover a further to cases worldwide.


What were we looking for? We wanted to go further than case studies usually go, digging deeper into how practices really worked and in quantifying benefits and the business case. A ‘good’ case study tends to


meet most of the following criteria: ■


■ ■


real change is made on the ground and how the business operates


holistic view, considering a number of dimen- sions of sustainability


sustainability principles are integrated into the DNA of the business


■ the ‘extended enterprise’ is covered ■ challenges and barriers overcome ■ the business case is considered. ■ impact on business performance.


As space is limited, our focus here is to highlight just a few of the themes emerging from the initial case studies.


Working with the new ‘Flatliner’ system has enabled Apollo Motor Group to save parts, reduce waste, save cost and jobs


Nobody has all the answers; while there is much rhetoric in the marketplace, it is probably fair to say that no single business has all the bases covered. The good news, however, is that we have seen some great examples of best prac-


tice across a range of companies in different sectors, which clearly deliver excellent results for the benefit of the planet as well as the businesses concerned. We have also found that innovation is not always the domain of the big brands; some relatively unknown businesses are just getting on with what they feel makes good business sense. It is perhaps less important where the drive for change comes from, more that any business can expand its vision to include all possibilities and capture commercial as well as sustainability benefits.


For some businesses it would seem that they find sustainability almost by accident. For Apollo Motor Group, an auto repair service company based in the South of England, the initial driver came from the need to significant- ly reduce costs at a time when input prices were rising by up to 20%. They found the best route available to them was to have a fresh look at their approach to managing resources and waste. By integrating a trio of new technologies and changing their process, they reduced wasted parts by 42% and energy and carbon emissions by 34%, while significantly reducing costs, improving margins and preserving jobs. They found that an improved sustainability impact was the unintended beneficial consequence of dealing with the common enemy that is waste. Kingspan Insulation gained a key insight when considering future scenarios. The compa- ny realised that there could be major risks to the future availability and cost of raw materials for the manufacture of its insulation products. This could have a destabilising influence on the future wellbeing of the business, so they set out on a journey of exploring alternatives and soon realised there was a lot more to sustainability than embodied impacts. The journey continues. For Gazeley, a developer of logistics facilities, moving towards a sustainable world was not just the right thing to do, it was good for


Sustainable Business | August/September 2010 | 37


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