Sustainable Business

Any sustainable movement is ultimately about survival, whether it relates to businesses, natural environments or communities. The messages it carries therefore should be underlined with simple, powerful concepts that have the ability to engage and influence the right stakeholders in order to drive collaboration and deliver the outcomes that matter. However, some experts in this field feel increasingly that such movements are losing sight of that – not least in the business arena where interest in this topic has intensified in recent years. The problem primarily, is one of language and intellectualised clutter. Attend any corporate sustainability conference these days and you'll likely be treated to the latest thinking around grand theories such as 'net positive', 'disruptive innovation' and 'collaborative consumption' – not to mention a 'game-changing paradigm shift' or two. Likewise with social media, sustainability practitioners seem intent on filling their twitter timelines and linkedin updates with high-brow terminology. The question is, what does all of this intellectualising really mean, and does it serve any viable use at all? Sustainability consultant Gareth Kane who heads up Terra Infirma feels this current love affair with language could be in danger of alienating wider audiences. He recalls having to look up the term 'endo-symbiosis' once to describe some sustainable process. It was, he notes, "a very precise and obscure biological term meaning one organism evolving inside of another". "The sustainability agenda has to keep stretching itself and not become complacent, but there are far too many people in it who seem to want to create a high priesthood for sustainability. That is completely the wrong attitude," he says. "If you want to mainstream sustainability, it has to be open and intuitive rather than a dark mystery. As sustainability practitioners, we have to let go of our ego and be humble enough to see the world through the eyes of the general public and frame sustainability in a way that appeals to them." Kane rightly points out that the environment doesn't care whether Sustainability Stakeholder engagement 2/4

• Cover