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We wish we could say that finding Eco-Advantage will be easy. But like excellence in any form, you have to work for it. We know this runs contrary to the message in many of the books and articles about “green business." Ever since a few leaders like 3M demonstrated the .Payoffs of eco-efficiency, going green has been portrayed as a sure thing. Unfortunately, not every environmental effort produces win-win results. Developing innovative products, bringing them to market successfully, keeping customers happy, and other elements of business success are difficult enough. Adding an environment...
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Companies find many ways to talk about how they handle environmental and social issues. Some focus on "triple bottom line" performance or sustainability. Others frame their work in terms of corporate social responsibility, stewardship, citizenship, or environment, health, and safety. Any of these approaches can serve to galvanize action and create Eco-Advantage. The key lies in execution—including environment and social issues in business operations. But each company needs to find the language and organizational structures that work within its own culture. At the operational level, managi...
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We studies dozens of companies during our four years of research. A few have not evolved in their thinking since the 1970s. They are still grousing about legislation and complying with it grudgingly. Others have begun to see the business opportunities in going "beyond compliance." A few have embarked on bold new initiatives to provide solutions to the world's environmental ills—like GE's plan to sell renewable energy, efficient power generation, water purification, and much more. The  companies who "get" the interface between environmentalism and business—the ones that are on their way...
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What about small business.  Can they sit this one out? In a world, no. Here are six reasons why: Laws that once applied only to big business are encroaching on smaller enterprises. Even bakeries and gas stations must now comply with clean air regulations. Small companies often have an edge in innovation. Of the more than $1, 00 billion in R&D money that each year is plowed into the i tin tech" marketplace, the bulk goes to new, smaller ventures win historically have produced more breakthrough products and services. Going after the consumption choices of individuals remains difficu...
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For some enterprises, a new green perspective will be trans-formative, leading to fresh thinking, new markets, profitability gains, and increased value. For others, the environmental lens may emerge more gradually and modestly, as another critical element of corporate strategy. With time, these companies may find long-term, sustained advantage, but not dramatic immediate gains, front being green. For the big, heavy industries, the gains are closer to being assured. But smaller and "cleaner" companies will find surprising benefits as well. In today's world, no company, big or small, operatin...

How do companies create an Eco-Advantage? To answer this question, we culs039012first had to ask a more basic one: How do companies create competitive advantage in general?  According to  Michael Porter, from Harvard Business School, he  describes two basic categories its of competitive advantage. A company can:

Portoer’s work on competitiveness proved a useful starting point for analyzing the Eco-Advantage strategies that WaveRiders using.

Some costs are obvious and relatively short term: inputs used, energy consumed, time and money spent on meeting regulatory requirements. More fundamentally, a great deal of pollution is waste and a function of outmoded production processes or poor product design. So improving the resource productivity of a business the amount of material or energy needed per unit of output goes straight to the bottom line. Similarly, eliminating regulatory burdens by avoid ii products, chemicals, or processes that require special care and do it mentation lowers overhead.

Companies that successfully manage environmental risks lower operating costs, reduce the cost of capital, drive up stock market valuations, and keep insurance premiums reasonable. They also avoid the indirect costs of business interruption and lost goodwill.

On the revenue side, the benefits of differentiation through good strategies01environmental stewardship are sometimes concrete like commanding a price premium or just selling more but are largely intangible: strengthened relationships with customers, employees, and some stakeholders. Some say that these intangibles are too vague to be measured, but they’re wrong. How much does it cost to acquire a new customer to replace a lost one? That’s the rough value of increasing loyalty.

How about employee churn? If improving morale and employee engagement in the company’s mission lowers turnover, how much would that save? And what about community support? What does it cost Intel in carrying costs, for example, if it can’t build the next billion-dollar chip plant for 12 months because of community unease about how much water the company uses? These measurable gains make investments in intangible values more concrete.

To help us think through the environmental strategies companies use, or fail to use, we added one more dimension to the analysis. reduceWe asked ourselves whether a strategy was fairly certain or less certain to generate value. To oversimplify, we say that “certain” is roughly equivalent to the short-term and “less certain” to the long-term.

Take cost control versus risk management as an example. If you decrease waste in your system, you can be pretty sure how much you’ll save. And you’ll have an easier time selling the project internally. But what will it save the company to substitute a less toxic substance that costs more upfront? The risk is lower, but what is that worth? When does the benefit come? These questions are harder to answer, so risk control is less certain, although it often pays off more in the long run. The same holds true for the upside: It’s easier (though not easy) to drive revenues than to increase brand value.

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