Futures-informed sustainability

Sustainability is arguably today's most important future-oriented pro-social and pro-environmental change agenda. At the moment, corporate sustainability tends to be focused on issues such as climate change as seen in isolation, and it typically lacks systemic depth. In the future, sustainability will increasingly be understood as a critical platform for corporate renewal, and as a new organizing pattern for the entire economy. Any organization wanting to discover a fundamental source of future-oriented innovation would be well advised to align its strategy with the long-run shape of sustainability.

Synthesys offers guidance for adopting this approach, including: sustainability-based business models based on industrial ecology principles mapped to a value loop (a closed-loop version of the value chain); a sustainable customer value design process; sustainability-based performance measurement using a hybrid organization performance and sustainability assessment framework; and holistic strategic governance based on rethinking the entire process of strategy formulation for the sustainable corporation of the future.