Capitalism at the Crossroads: The Unlimited Business Opportunities in Solving the World’s Most Difficult Problems

3. The Sustainable Value Portfolio

Some years ago, William Ruckelshaus, former EPA administrator and CEO of Browning Ferris, made the following statement: “Sustainability is as foreign a concept to managers in capitalist societies as profits are to managers in the former Soviet Union.” While intended to be at least partially tongue-in-cheek, I believe that this statement showed considerable insight. There can be little doubt that sustainability is one of the most frequently used but least understood terms of our time; it is right up there with the term strategy when it comes to overuse and lack of meaning. (I say that as a professor of both strategy and sustainability!) Indeed, it is with some regularity that I find myself engaged in a discussion ...