Survey: The Business of Sustainability Now

How are sustainability pressures altering the competitive landscape, and how are businesses responding? The first annual Business of Sustainability Survey and interview project found answers.

By Maurice Berns, Andrew Townend, Zayna Khayat, Balu Balagopal, Martin Reeves, Michael S. Hopkins and Nina Kruschwitz

8 Reasons (You Never Thought Of) That Sustainability Will Change Management

Transparency, accidental innovation, trust, collaboration — as sustainability affects how the world works, so will it affect how business works in the world. Smart managers know how.

By Michael S. Hopkins

Does Sustainability Change the Talent Equation?

When it comes to tapping into the passions of employees, the opportunities and threats presented by sustainability are two sides of the same coin.

By Leslie Brokaw

What Executives Don’t Get About Sustainability (and Further Notes on the Profit Motive)

An interview with celebrated scientist, entrepreneur and sustainable business strategist Amory Lovins on how companies can seize the opportunities they’re missing.

Interview by Michael S. Hopkins

The Mini-Cases: 5 Companies, 5 Strategies, 5 Transformations

Sustainability-related concerns are prompting many businesses to make major shifts. Here are mini-case glimpses of Nike, Rio Tinto, GE, Better Place and Wal-Mart.

By Samuel Fromartz

Long-Viewed, See-Through, Collaborative and Retooled

The competitive landscape is being reshaped by sustainability pressures. What capabilities and characteristics will companies need to cultivate in order to thrive?

One CEO’s Trip From Dismissive to Convinced

From organizational ignorance to integrated competitive advantage. … How Interface’s Ray Anderson became the leading sustainability CEO — a timeline.

By Bruce G. Posner

Which Innovation Efforts Will Pay?

For many companies, developing new products is a hit-or-miss proposition. Some businesses are relying on a new analytic tool to ensure that the hits are more likely.

By Alexander Kandybin

Set Up Remote Workers to Thrive

As increasing numbers of employees work remotely, companies need to find effective ways to promote internal communication, social interaction and daily visibility.

By Jay Mulki, Fleura Bardhi, Felicia Lassk and Jayne Nanavaty-Dahl

Does IP Strategy Have to Cripple Open Innovation?

How your IP strategy might be killing your open innovation activities — and what you can do to make it an enabler, even a builder of industrial “ecosystems,” instead.

By Oliver Alexy, Paola Criscuolo and Ammon Salter

Which Way Should You Downsize in a Crisis?

Managers have been inundated with advice on the dos and don’ts of laying off employees. But the truth is that there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to downsizing.

By Christopher D. Zatzick, Mitchell L. Marks and Roderick D. Iverson

What the GDP Gets Wrong (Why Managers Should Care)

The irony of the information age is that we know less about the sources of value
in the economy than we did 25 years ago. Here’s why.

By Erik Brynjolfsson and Adam Saunders