Competitive Advantage: Examining Business Strategy Through an Environmental Lens

• Author: G. Tracy Mehan III
• Pages: 39-41

39

Competitive Advantage:

Examining Business Strategy

Through an Environmental Lens

By G. Tracy Mehan III

Green to Gold : How Smart Compa nies Use Environmental

Strategy to In novate, Create Value, and Buil d Competitive

Advantage, by Daniel C. Esty and Andrew S. Winston. Yale University

Press. 366 pages.

From the March/ April 2007 issue of The Environmental Forum.

What possible justication could there

be for publishing another book

on sustainable development, envi-

ronmental management, or corporate socia l

responsibility?

Michael Porter, Stephen Schmidheiny, Fran-

ces Cairncross, Paul Hawken, Stuart Hart, Ray

Anderson, Forest Reinhardt, Bill McDonough,

Michael Braungardt, and others have written at

length on these subjects since the early 1990s.

All of these commentators are, in fact, cited in

an appendix to Daniel C. Esty and Andrew

S. Winston’s latest contribution to the canon,

Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Envi-

ronmental Strateg y to Innovate, Create Value,

and Build Competitive Advantage.

Having had the opportunity to have worked with and read deeply in the

writings of one of the authors, this reviewer suspended disbelief and dutifully

took book in hand. And he was rewarded for his perseverance.

Green to Gold is exceptional in both the breadth a nd depth of its argu-

ment for the competitive adva ntage obtained by companies that exam ine

their business strategy through “an environmental lens.” It combines sound

scholarship and good sense regarding the very real dicu lties of implement-