CORPORATE INNOVATION & ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND SUSTAINABILITY
What is the Relationship Between Sustainability, Innovation and Entrepreneurship?
Innovation and entrepreneurship ensure sustainability is integral to systems and practices to create new products, processes, business models, and enterprises.
Shane and Venkataraman state that sustainable entrepreneurship is “…the achievement of sustainable development, by discovering, evaluating and exploiting opportunities and creating value that produces economic prosperity, social cohesion and environmental protection.”
There are two general types of sustainable entrepreneurship: social and environmental. Social entrepreneurship focuses on impacting societal challenges in a positive way.
Environmental entrepreneurship focuses on creating innovations that positively affect the environment and/or that help restore ecosystems, particular species, or elements of the natural world. Neither of these types are mutually exclusive; social and environmental issues are deeply related to one another.
Sustainable innovation differs from traditional innovation, according to the Network for Business Sustainability, and can be understood along a spectrum from “operational optimization” to “systems building”. See graphic on the right from Adams et al.
Skoll Foundation Awardees: Six Social Entreprenuers Using Business For Good
Why Sustainability Needs Innovation
and Entrepreneurship
Sustainability and the numerous issues it entails–from inequality to climate change to food insecurity–is a clarion call for nearly every product, process, and business model to be re-imagined. Sounds like a job for entrepreneurs and innovators!
Indeed, sustainability is THE innovation challenge and opportunity of the 21st century–and probably the centuries after this one. Every industry and sector will, sooner or later, be disrupted by social and environmental issues–and an entreprenuer with a profitable solution. That is why Nidumolu, Prahalad, and Rangaswami wrote their famous 2009 Harvard Business Review article, “Why Sustainability is Now the Key Driver of Innovation.”
The final reason why sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship is critically important is because social and environmental impact needs to be considered by EVERY entrepreneur, venture fund, and angel investor. We need to ensure that new products and businesses don’t create more of the unintended health, ecological, and inequality problems we have come to recognize from past start-ups, inventions, and new ventures.
ADVANCE YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF CORPORATE INNOVATION & ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND SUSTAINABILITY
Learn what sustainable supply chain is all about and its importance
Learn the important things to know in this field
Learn how sustainability fits into your courses
Learn how sustainability relates to your career