Embedded Sustainability: The Next Big Competitive Advantage

Embedded Sustainability: The Next Big Competitive Advantage Chris Laszlo and Nadya Zhexembayeva Stanford University Press, 2011 288 pages, hardback, $35.00Within only the past decade, the business landscape has changed tremendously. For many organizations, it shows how malleable their approaches to doing business have led them to success, or even ride out the economic downturn. For other organizations, however, it has clearly been shown that critical components for long-term success were never in the business plan at all. As we come out of a beleaguering recession, business will not remain business as usual when, in fact, the business landscape is changing yet again. Organizations continue to search for an avenue to get ahead of their competitors, remain profitable, and realize a vision of long-term growth. In Embedded Sustainability: the Next Big Competitive Advantage, Chris Laszlo and Nadya Zhexembayeva present a strongly favorable approach to building directly into the very DNA of an organization, along with providing a set of tools to get the process underway. Laszlo and Zhexembayeva clearly show that this next phase of competitive advantage has already begun due to three major trends that they have identified; declining resources, radical transparency, and increasing expectations (Laszlo and Zhexembayeva, 201 1, p. 6). These three trends remain at the forefront of the discussion due to how they link together all phases of sustainability. This being the case, the book continues to explain that the acts of permanently embedding into an organization are currently taking place by many market leaders and organizations paving their way to the top. The authors clearly state up front that:Declining resources, radical transparency, and rising expectations have reached a critical point where the rules of the game have changed. Embedded is not just a better environmentalist strategy; it is a response to a radically different market reality, one that unifies profit, ecological, and social spheres into a single integrated value creation space (Laszlo and Zhexembayeva, 2011, p. 2).However, approaches to may not be exactly what many organizational leaders are anticipating, where green fads and bolt sustainability are both short term and temporary (Laszlo and Zhexembayeva, 201 1, p. 102). The book explains very clearly that, while green and responsible business practices and products are good, they are basically a bolt on approach to business that yields short run results. However, both authors are very appreciative and cognizant of the portion of the marketplace that thrives the foundations of green concepts and social responsibility. Of many given, a customer-driven example from the text provides a cut-and-dry comparison between bolt on platforms versus embedded sustainability.Take a current Clorox Green Works dish detergent that is the market; it is smarter, biodegradable, 97% naturally derived, and priced at the same level at its alternative and competing dish detergents. This is what the customer now expects and desires. In fact, this product has been a hit since it stocked the shelves.The authors show how customers like the idea of responsible and smart products, but when there is a green premium added into the price, purchase behaviors do not always reflect these opinions. Rather, the green and responsible products become more of a niche. However, it has been found that when smarter products are priced similarly with other purchase options, customers typically lean toward the more responsible product. Clearly seen, organizations have already found ways of bringing smarter products to the market place sans a green premium. It is imperative for to become a permanent fixture of the organizational structure due to its criticality for success. The previous example is just one of many that can be looked at, but there are so many other factors that the authors present as well. …