A small but influential group of mainstream global industry leaders are now reinventing the role of business in society. They are shifting the focus away from minimizing negative impacts to offering new solutions to global problems that the public sector has been unable to tackle alone. In this new competitive environment, societal challenges such as climate change or the alleviation of global poverty are not only risks, but huge business opportunities, not only for niche players, but for mainstream business.

These leaders are creating ‘Sustainable Value’. They are creating it through the provision of value to both their shareholders and their stakeholders — an ever-growing list of diverse constituents impacted by the social, environmental, and financial performance of global business. In short, they are doing well by doing good.

In this outstanding book, Chris Laszlo defines, illustrates, and shows how business can action ‘Sustainable Value’ in three profoundly different ways. First, a management fable looks at the experiences of a dynamic business leader as she grapples with the new business realities of managing stakeholder, as well as shareholder pressures. Second, with the real thing — inside stories from some of the largest corporations in the world that are successfully integrating sustainability into their core activities, not only from a sense of moral correctness, but because it makes good business sense. And, finally, with frameworks, tools, and methods that will make sustainable value creation concrete for business practitioners everywhere.

This book is a masterful synthesis — part novel and part executive briefing — a refreshing kind of prophetic pragmatism, helping leaders anticipate and see the future in the context of the actual. In Sustainable Value Chris Laszlo speaks with resounding clarity to the living challenges, the real dilemmas, and haunting questions of CEOs everywhere.

At a time when more and more business people are waking up to their contribution to environmental degradation and talking about the importance of moving toward sustainability, there is precious little in the business literature about how to do sustainability. Chris Laszlo has written a valuable guide that begins to fill the gap between talk and action. Read Sustainable Value, dispel the myth that environmental responsibility is expensive, and form a new vision of industry as part of the solution rather than a part of the problem; and more profitable at that, not less.
Ray Anderson, Founder and Chairman, Interface, Inc.

Integrating sustainability into business activities is increasingly driving innovation and entrepreneurship. Global industry leaders are leapfrogging traditional EH&S and CSR approaches in favor of new business models that create value for shareholders and for society. Sustainable Value is a bold and inspiring read for managers who want the ‘story’ of sustainability as well as compelling case studies accompanied by a structured guide to managing in the new business context.
Luk Van Wassenhove, The Henry Ford Chaired Professor of Manufacturing, INSEAD

In the swelling sea of sustainability literature, Chris Laszlo’s Sustainable Value offers an island of clarity and focus. By combining compelling storytelling with actual cases and tools, he shows how mainstream companies can build competitively superior strategies by solving the world’s social and environmental problems. Prepare to cast the ‘trade-off myth’ adrift once and for all.
Stuart Hart, S.C. Johnson Chair in Sustainable Global Enterprise, Cornell University and author of Capitalism at the Crossroads

Chris Laszlo’s message is huge and simple: we are on the eve of one of the greatest revolutions in management history, an era of deep-seated transformation, where ‘sustainable value creation’ is emerging as the most powerful unifying thread for propelling industry-leading innovation in complete and simultaneous convergence with solutions to the call of our times. In Sustainable Value, Laszlo makes the vital point not with abstractions but with the real thing — for example, inside stories from the largest corporation in the world, and with frameworks, tools, and methods that take sustainable value creation out of the theoretical to the concrete.
Professor David Cooperrider, Fairmount Mineral Professor of Social Entrepreneurship; Founder and Chairman, Center of Business as an Agent of World Benefit, Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University

Chris Laszlo has done it again! He is challenging business and society to understand the ways in which businesses can use their core business strategies to act as agents of world benefit. The outcome? The economy thrives, businesses thrive, and society thrives. None of us knows enough about how business leaders could be contributing simultaneously to their own bottom line and to the common good. Using some of the very best case examples, Sustainable Value goes a long way in educating us to succeed in the 21st century.
Nancy J. Adler, Professor of International Management, McGill University

An accessible fable of a hard-nosed executive’s awakening to the power of sustainability strategies to enable business success. The story, case studies, and toolkit convincingly reinforce each other to make the point that sustainability and business goals are a ‘both–and’ proposition not an ‘either–or’ trade-off. Chris Laszlo’s first book, The Sustainable Company, should be a mandatory text in MBA schools. It now has a companion — Sustainable Value makes the theory come alive. I can’t wait for the movie version, as a compelling response to the ‘now what?!’ question implied by The Corporation.
Bob Willard, author of The Next Sustainability Wave and The Sustainability Advantage

Chris Laszlo’s Sustainable Value is not only a great read but also a comprehensive and practical way for current and future leaders to learn to, as the book says, ‘think differently’ about the whole issue of ecological sustainability and corporate responsibility in practice. The work is engaging and the details provide a coherent and comprehensive picture of what it means to operate a profitable and highly successful business based on nature’s principles with the future held clearly in mind.
Sandra Waddock, Professor, Boston College Carroll School of Management and Visiting Scholar, Harvard University

Chris Laszlo recites numerous environmental and social challenges facing business, including those stemming from toxic chemicals in products. As a shareholder activist, I have witnessed many companies reaping benefits from stakeholder knowledge of such problems. But I’ve also seen companies ignoring stakeholder suggestions that could build enterprise value. My own involvement with the sustainable value network process outlined in Sustainable Value — which has led to Wal-Mart’s adoption of a precautionary safer chemicals policy — convinces me that any business with a sizeable social and environmental footprint will need to apply Laszlo’s tools if it wishes to provide sustainable value for shareholders and stakeholders alike in the years ahead.
Richard A. Liroff, PhD, Executive Director, Investor Environmental Health Network

Foreword
Patrick J. Cescau, Group Chief Executive Officer, Unilever

Introduction

Part I: Deena’s story

Chapter 2: Turning point
Chapter 3: Rebirth of the sustainable company

Part II: Mainstream companies that are doing well by doing good

Chapter 4: The new competitive environment
Chapter 5: DuPont
Chapter 6: Wal-Mart
Chapter 7: Lafarge
Chapter 8: NatureWorks LLC, a subsidiary of Cargill

Part III: The sustainable value toolkit

Chapter 10: The eight disciplines
Chapter 11: Putting it all together