Sustainability and Innovation. Business & Marketing Essay

Sustainability and Innovation
By:
Course
Professors’ Name
Institution
Location of the Institution
Date
Sustainability and Innovation
Sustainability innovation refers to a process in which sustainability considerations on the environment, social and financial situations are integrated into an organization’s system from the generation of an idea to its development and commercialization. Innovation is essential as it reflects on the economic growth in the future and the environmental protection of natural systems (McKinsey, 2020, p. 1). The tool aims at delivering critical goods and services with the notion of business while protecting equality, environmental justice, and human health. Sustainability innovation encompasses the commercialization of technologies, entrepreneurial products and services, and the adoption of new systems and processes at society levels. It involves incremental and progressive improvement on consumer goods and services and significant re-design on concepts of production. The new ideas of production should satisfy the same functional needs and create sustainability in society.
Part A question 1
One of the significant barriers toward innovation and sustainability is economical and financial barriers. Most development models focus on economic growth rather than focusing on human rights, welfare, and environmental factors (McKinsey, 2020, p. 4). The world innovation is lagging because we tend to think that the environment is part of the economy rather than treating the economy as part of the situation. If we incorporate the economy as part of the environment, then environmental services will be maintained. Also, innovation barriers in schools still lack because innovation-oriented research is still limited. This implies that there should be a closer connection between research centers and economists to ensure the world overcome various problems.
The wake of COVID-19, increasing world population, and unsustainable production due to laying off of employees is a significant barrier towards sustainable innovation (McKinsey, 2020, p. 2). Sustainability encompasses initiatives and projects which go beyond the company and the factory walls. The pandemic has also shifted the leaders’ attention toward the lives and livelihoods of their employees and the clients. In the face of many death incidences, the leaders cannot champion for sustainability or set start dates for the campaigns on the environment and sustainable practices (McKinsey, 2020, p. 4). The concrete priorities established by the leaders towards creating sustainable innovations have shifted toward solving the COVID-19 crisis rather than creating a sustainable future. After the disaster, leaders will turn their attention in the quest to uplift the economy instead of focusing on environmental issues. Instead, the leaders should take action on hard topics such as water use, waste generation, and disposal, environmental pollution, labor conditions in factories, and all the positive steps they can take to create and support sustainability in the post-Coronavirus world.
According to the former CEO of Unilever, Polman, sustainability can be achieved with the right leadership (McKinsey, 2020, p. 3). The leaders of a company can help transform the consumer markets and behavior of people beyond the factory setting. The innovation by the management team is an excellent enabler for innovative sustainability toward vision 2030. Amid the COVID-19 crisis, change in the production sectors can strengthen competition and speed up technological innovation and transformation. Management innovation can be done by exposing employees to diverse environments and countries of operations. Collective action is another innovation enabler in which individual leaders accept to collectively work with others in an attempt to solve innovation challenges. Companies, supply chains, and the companies can take a collective approach toward preventing climate alterations, declining biodiversity, and deforestation. Joint ownership implies that individual company problems can be solved collectively and turn them into everyday issues. Also, the strategy is an essential enabler in the quest for innovation sustainability. Companies need to understand the needs, values, and culture of the people in which they operate and consume their products (McKinsey, 2020, p. 4). The strategy encompasses leadership and resources, research, priority, and process innovation. Leaders can utilize their positions and champion for independent research on change, give preference to business-based and production innovations.
Part A question 2
Business entities should not only focus on making profits for their shareholders but instead, focus on creating sustainable innovation for the benefit of the community. The organization depends on the stakeholders such as the community, Government, media, owners, and the general population who utilize their goods and services. Drawing illustrations from the M-Pesa article by Katie Zandbergen, organizations and business entities have a role to play in the community (Katie, 2018, p. 2). Their functions include creating job opportunities, providing service welfare to the societies, and promoting education and innovation. Safaricom Kenya, for instance, has created thousands of job opportunities, foundations that are innovative-based, and promotion of talents. In doing so, the company witnessed an increase in their profits by 14.2 %, which is equivalent to 63 billion Kenyan shillings ($615 million) (Katie, 2018, p. 4). This implies that a company can maximize profits by uplifting social work and the lives of consumers.
Mpesa Kenya notices the underlying p...