Published on GreenBiz.com, 5-14-2012
By Deb Gallagher
“MIT Sloan Management Review released the results of its latest global survey on sustainability and innovation earlier this month, revealing that a significant number of companies see the value of sustainable business practices — and are repeating the financial rewards.
For the first time, the results were released in an interactive data visualization format. The new tool allows readers to filter the data by industry, company size, company performance and other factors. Presenting the data this way yielded several interesting findings.
- The automotive sector gets it: The automotive industry leads the way in making the buisness case for sustainability. However, when it comes to profitability, automotive is only the middle of the pack; the consumer products industry is at the top, with 42 percent of consumer products respondents saying that they are profiting from their sustainability activities.
- High representational benefits: Improved brand reputation is the greatest benefit companies enjoy from addressing sustainability issues. This is especially true in the automotive, consumer products and media/entertainment industries.
- Customers drive sustainability: Of the ‘harvesters,’ those respondents who say their companies are profiting from sustainability-related activities, 53 percent indicate that customer preference for sustainable offerings was a key driver in changing their business model. In the more resource-intensive industries, such as chemicals and energy and utilities, issues such as legislative or political pressure and maintaining a ‘license to operate’ increase in influence.
- Size matters: Overall, the larger the company, the more likely that it will make a business case for sustainability. But that trend varies across industries – in industrial services, for example, companies with more than 100,000 employees were less likely to make a business case for sustainability than companies with 200 – 1,000 employees within the same industry.”
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