Recently, we measured how much incremental value this stakeholder approach has created for the company, evaluating its contribution to new product development, revenues, and profit margins. Successful companies learn how to predict and lead their markets as they restructure towards more sustainable products and services. Like Henkel, with the specter of phosphates looming, or Wellman, operating in the increasingly controversial plastics industry, these leaders recognize that environmental concerns can and will reshape their markets in profound ways. Successful companies collaborate with environmental stakeholders to envision new solutions to environmental problems. Then they embed these solutions into their core businesses, fueling the restructuring of the market in ways that powerfully benefit their bottom line.
Successful companies make a clear up-front commitment to become a part of the solution.
This commitment enables them to build the trust required to foster strong learning and innovation across stakeholder boundaries. They do not seek to persuade or negotiate with stakeholders to defend poor business practices - a fundamentally different process. Companies have not traditionally recognized the value of including environmentalists and indigenous people along with customers, suppliers and investors in their core business decisions. However, creating learning-oriented relationships with stakeholders can help a corporation answer questions central to its future, including questions about market restructuring and potentially profitable solutions to environmental challenges. Such learning can help a corporation build competitively powerful and sustainable businesses.