Ben Kellard Director of Business Strategy , Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership ( CISL ), on the need for a sustainable business culture
CISL
Ben Kellard Director of Business Strategy , Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership ( CISL ), on the need for a sustainable business culture
COP26 has placed sustainability , and specifically a low carbon future , right at the forefront of the business strategy agenda . No longer are companies able simply to pursue a profitat-all-costs strategy without considering the environmental consequences of their actions . The customer of the future will simply not allow it .
However , for many companies there exists a large gap between intention and reality . They might wish to clean up their act , but how do they accomplish this ? In many respects , the first step is to define what a sustainable business is and to work out whether you are one .
“ The sustainable business identifies a purpose that serves society in a sustainable way ,” explains Ben Kellard , director of business strategy at Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership ( CISL ), which is part of Cambridge University . He sees leading companies taking an external view to understand how the world is changing in terms of factors such as inequality and climate change . “ That are completely reshaping how we do business , what our consumers expect of us and so on ,” he says .
Sustainable businesses also take an “ inside out view ”, considering “ what they are really good at as a business ”, and overlap that with the changing needs of their consumers and society to identify a “ sustainable purpose ”, which they “ internally integrate throughout the business .” In effect they make sustainability core to their business , aligning
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