ABSTRACT
This chapter covers the fundamentals of sustainability for strategic advantage—why sustainability is a growing concern and strategic priority for companies in every sector, what leading companies are doing about it, and how they are doing it. It delineates two successive paradigms: embedded sustainability built on the business case for sustainability and the emergence of flourishing—the aspiration that human and other life will thrive on Earth forever—as the new and more inspiring purpose of business. The shift to flourishing does not abandon the earlier paradigm of embedded sustainability. It adds to it a shift in consciousness that changes who we are being, not only what we are doing. The idea proposed here is that embedded sustainability strategies can benefit from the addition of one other ingredient: reflective (or mindful) practices that increase our sense of connectedness to self, others, and the world. The addition of such practices doesn’t require more work; it simply changes the way we do our work and, more importantly, the results we achieve.
