Innovation for sustainability

• Date: 01 November 2018
• Published date: 01 November 2018
• Author: Fred Phillips
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/jsc.2237

RESEARCH ARTICLES

Innovation for sustainability

*

Fred Phillips

University of New Mexico and Stony Brook,

State University of New York, New York,

New York

Correspondence

Fred Phillips, Anderson School of

Management, University of New Mexico,

Albuquerque, NM.

Email: fred.phillips@stonybrook.edu

Funding information

Chinese Academy of Sciences

Abstract

Sustainable development requires new planning methods that acknowledge many kinds of risks.

There is a mismatch between the nature and imperatives of innovation on the one hand, and

the prospects of reaching the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs), on the other. This con-

ceptual note clarifies the connections among innovation, risk, and sustainability, focusing espe-

cially on the urgencies of environmental sustainability. It argues that new methods of planning

are a precondition of SDGs success, as it is reform of entrepreneurship practices. It notes prom-

ising methodological directions.

1|SUSTAINABILITY, INNOVATION,

AND RISK

Innovation is needed to bring new technologies to bear on environ-

mental sustainability. Implications of this fact seem not to be well-

understood within sustainability discourse, particularly in discussions

of how to reach the UN's sustainable development goals, the SDGs.

This article shows how the current state and trajectory of innovation

will affect progress toward achieving the 169 objectives of the SDGs.

Innovative technologies and products are now often provided by

new ventures. Larger companies allow the start-up ventures to take the

attendant risks, and acquire that the start-ups should they succeed. Many

start-ups, including those attempting radical and environmental innova-

tion, are quite risky from a market perspective—and also from technologi-

cal, social, safety, and development perspectives (Phillips, 2001).

This risk is not allowed in the very conservative Brundtland defi-

nition of sustainability (Brundtland, 1987), which prohibits bequeath-

ing increased risk—even financial risk—to future generations.

Some years ago I wrote (Phillips, 2014),

Suppose I borrow money to build a green business.

Green firms face the same business risks as other com-

panies; my children might inherit a profitable business,

or they might inherit nothing, my assets wiped out by

the bankruptcy of my enterprise. [In the latter case,] I

have compromised their ability to meet their own needs.

Can this be an excuse for doing nothing—taking no

risk—now? Obviously, no. A green future depends on

innovation. Innovation needs to be financed via debt

or equity. And that implies risk. In fact, abjuring risk

compromises the future.

Space exploration, for example, is risky. Yet plentiful resources

until the nth generation are no farther away than the asteroid belt.

We cannot achieve sustainability by avoiding risk or intergenera-

tional transfers of risk. Risk is part and parcel of sustainability. Risk

must be prudently embraced.

2|THE HUMAN RACE'S ECOLOGICAL

SUICIDE

The sage Stephen Hawking declares that the human race faces an

existential environmental crisis within 200 years (von Radowitz,

2017). A new series of Conservation International commercials

1

reminds us, “If nature isn't kept healthy, humans won't survive.”

Figure 1 lists just a few of the ways we are killing ourselves by killing

our support environment.

Figure 1 omits many other environmental malfeasances, including

rampant destruction of the Amazon Basin's fantastic biodiversity, and

plastic waste choking the oceans. The human impacts can no longer

be dismissed as threats for “the future”; we are feeling them now. In a

September 1, 2017 mass email, former Texas Agricultural Commis-

sioner Jim Hightower highlights “the ravages of climate change”:

In the same week as [Hurricane] Harvey, torrential

rains have caused mudslides in Sierra Leone that have

claimed more than 1,000 lives, and the worst

*JEL classification codes: CIOPQ.

1

www.takepart.com/video/2014/10/06/conservation-international-nature-

speaking.

DOI: 10.1002/jsc.2237

Strategic Change. 2018;27:539–542. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jsc © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 539