ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on helping managers to understand the link between the core business proposition and sustainable strategy. An understanding of the business logic provides a frame of reference within which managers can develop long-term strategy that integrates sustainable practices and generates sustainable innovations instead of unproductively and continually reacting and responding to each and every change in environmental and social regulation or societal concern, demand, and trend. In order to translate an understanding of the core business proposition into sustainable innovations, managers need a clear understanding of how the sustainable value that is created by the innovations adds to corporate value. In “Creating Sustainable Value,” Hart and Milstein presented a framework that argued that, in creating sustainable value, firms also generate traditional corporate value. The Hart and Milstein framework presents a portfolio of approaches to create sustainable value for the firm and its stakeholders while competing successfully in delivering its core business proposition.
