Capitalism at the Crossroads: Aligning Business, Earth, and Humanity, Second Edition

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 this as a professor of both strategy and sustainability!) Indeed, it is with some regularity that I find myself engaged in a discussion ...