
How To Unleash Sustainable Innovation That Matters
This article was originally posted on Forbes.com. It has been reprinted here with permission from Ashoka.
As President and co-owner of the 102-year-old Lamey Wellehan shoe stores, Jim Wellehan used sustainability to foster innovation and remain relevant in the face of fierce competition. A 2015 Maine Business Leader of the Year, he reports that eliminating waste and carbon has freed capital for growth, enhancing employee and customer loyalty. Lamey Wellehan is pursuing abundance by weaving sustainability and business strategy together, simultaneously producing outstanding results for the enterprise, planet and community.
If you are simultaneously interested and confused by sustainability, you are not alone. A study by MIT Sloan and Boston Consulting Group found that while nearly two-thirds of business respondents felt sustainability issues were important, only 10% fully tackled them. As with Lamey Wellehan, the key to success for that 10% was practicing abundance.
Here are some of the fifteen tactics that industry leaders, Nobel Laureates, and disruptive upstarts have used to build mutual prosperity for shareholders, the planet and the local community. Most of these efforts are less than ten years old, yet have resulted in millions, even billions of dollars in savings and sales across industries around the world.