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In the first part of a two-part article, John Elkington examines the fundamental changes on the horizon for business - and explains why managers should be looking ahead. The second part of this article will appear in the December issue of Australian CPA.
We are all used to operating in a 3-D world. Even so, making sense of - let alone beating the competition in - a 3-D world can be remarkably complicated. Now sustainable capitalism, with its emphasis on the triple bottom line performance of companies, industries and economies, presents business with an even more complex challenge: a 7-D world.
The sustainability agenda, long understood as an attempt to harmonise the traditional financial bottom line with emerging thinking about the environmental bottom line, is turning out to be much more complicated than some early business enthusiasts imagined. Increasingly, we think in terms of a 'triple bottom line', focusing on economic prosperity, environmental quality and - the element which business had tended to overlook social justice.
To refuse the challenge implied by the triple bottom line is to risk extinction. Nor are these simply issues for major transnational corporations: increasingly, they will be forced to pass the pressure on down their supply chains, to smaller suppliers and contractors. These changes flow from a profound reshaping of society's expectations and, as a result, of the local and global markets that business serves.
To accept the challenge is to embark on a process which is likely to be both intensely taxing and - potentially - highly rewarding. With its dependence on seven closely linked revolutions (see Figure 1), the sustainable capitalism transition will be one of the most complex our species has ever had to negotiate. As we move into the third millennium, we are embarking on a global cultural revolution. Business, much more than governments or non-governmental organisations, will be in the driving seat. Paradoxically, this will not make the transition any easier for business people. For many, it will prove gruelling, if not impossible. For others, thinking and acting in 7-D will come to seem like second nature.
The seven dimensions of a sustainable future outlined below may come as a surprise to many of those used to dealing with the environmental revolution in...