What do you do if your company needs sustainable innovation?

Set clear sustainability goals: Define specific sustainability targets and objectives that align with your company's values and long-term vision.

When a company seeks sustainable innovation, it's essential to adopt a mindset that marries long-term vision with immediate actionable steps. This involves embedding sustainability into the core business strategy, leveraging data analytics to identify and prioritize areas of impact, and fostering a culture of continuous learning and adaptability. Collaborating across sectors and disciplines can also unlock new perspectives and solutions. My role as an economist and data science leader involves guiding this process, ensuring that innovation not only drives economic value but also contributes positively to social and environmental outcomes, creating a legacy of resilience and responsibility.

I feel that sustainable innovation is an oxymoron. Innovation by definition is disruptive, whereas a sustainable competitive advantage is a core competence that one firm possesses or has acquired that cannot be easily acquired or replicated. Warren Buffet calls them "Deep Moats". So, innovation could lead to a sustainable competitive advantage like resource efficiency, i.e. reduced energy consumption, better waste management, robust supply chain practices, or making sure that the materials used in your products are sustainable. But, innovation alone will not achieve those desirable outcomes, i.e. single use plastic packaging replacing other materials that are more easily recycled. One is the goal, the other is the path to achieve it.

Using resource efficiency as an example sustainable innovation means using less energy, water, waste, and other inputs to produce that same amount or more output. This is obviously better for the planet with regards to scarce resources, and reducing pollution and emissions, but also creates a strong financial incentive for the firm to cut costs without sacrificing quality or the value proposition for their customer. However, the firm that produces that product using better resource efficiency is part of a supply chain, so they need to communicate those goals to their suppliers, and justify them to their shareholders and investors to be successful in the long run. Employees are an essential part of that vision to be resource efficient.

Invest in research and development: Allocate resources R&D efforts focused on sustainable technologies, processes, and products.

Strategy is the Art of Knowing What Not To Do, so that management can focus on building a sustainable competitive advantage through thoughtful innovation that has to have a very specific goal of creating a unique value proposition for the target audience. Strategy in practice are the concrete steps that management needs to take to get to that goal. They need to be well mapped-out and realistically costed. The Valley of Death is running out of money or shareholders' patience before achieving that goal. It should mean treating investors' capital as a scarce and limited resource with a timeline to completion and profitability to generate a return on their investment. That should be communicated to them to avoid surprises and disappointment.

?? Adapting Continously to let's say the Changing Needs of The Customers / Consumers' Tastes and Preferences and the Technological Adoptation needs which the Firm Requires with let's say as the Industry Develops is the Name of the Game . And if the Firm adheres to this Game On a Sustainable Basis then ?? Two things could happen in the Longer Run - ?? Firstly , the Firm's Total Revenue ( TR ) Curve wouldn't be Negatively Effected which would Aid its Profits . ?? Secondly , the Total Cost ( TC ) Curve of the Firm would be Optimal . Both the 1st and the 2nd Points combined would I think Give a Decent Picture to the Firm's ?? Profit Maximising Motive in the Longer Run which ultimately ?? would make all of its Stakeholders happy .

One of the biggest watchouts when it comes to innovation is that it has to be RELEVANT to our consumer. A lot of times R&D might be working in isolation and come up with a great product, but which nobody needs! That is money down the drain. So consumer need, validation, acceptance...key steps to be checked before putting money on production.