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 environmental dimension opens up new opportunities but adds another layer of complexity to the management challenge. Gaining an edge means learning new skills, operating in new ways, and working through some hard trade-offs. In truth, the story is even more subtle. Some initiatives “fail” by traditional measures but create intangible value for a company. It’s often hard to tell when hard-to-measure returns are worth pursuing. Read more
In 1997, a Conoco oil tanker and a tugboat collided near Lake Charles, Louisiana, opening up a hundred-foot gash in the tanker. Few remember this accident today for one simple reason: Not a drop of oil was spilled.
Conoco, then owned by DuPont, had invested in “double- hull” tankers years ahead of regulations. One hull was ripped open, but the second held. “That spill would have been larger than the Exxon Valdez without the double hulls,” DuPont’s VP for Environment Paul Tebo told us. “Conoco would have been gone.”
What does this have to do with creating a corporate culture of environmental engagement ? Quite a bit. In 1989, when green issues were still off the radar screen of most of corporate America, DuPont’s visionary CEO Ed Woolard launched a board-level Environmental Policy Committee and established an Environmental Leadership Council made up of senior executives who met every month. Woolard’s green logic inspired fresh thinking across DuPont’s diverse business portfolio.’ Read more
Every business faces countless decisions about how to invest the next dollar.
Should we spend more money on R&D, on new equipment, or on a new marketing campaign? Every business has some process, either formal or informal, for making these cost-benefit calculations and coming to a conclusion. For most companies, the decision hinges on out-of-pocket costs and potential financial returns.
WaveRiders operate like all other companies, but they think differently. They include more than the obvious dollar payoff in their decision making. When considering the return on an investment, they factor in benefits such as enhanced brand image and corporate reputation, improved employee morale, community support, reduced governmental red tape, increased speed to market, and competitive differentiation. These intangibles are hard to measure, but smart companies include them in their strategic planning, despite the difficulty. Leading-edge managers have taught themselves to fold intangibles into their calculations at every turn because they know that immeasurable sometimes produce the greatest value. Read more
How do companies create an Eco-Advantage? To answer this question, we
first 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. Read more