3.3 Social Innovation and Corporate Sustainability
Sustainability is usually defined as the capacity to endure from an environmental,
economic, and social dimension. Contrary to common thinking that sustainability is
closely linked mainly to ecologically focused Sustainable Development as defined
by the Brundtland Commission (1987), it is highly important to understand
Sustainability in its holistic sense to link it to Social Innovation and make it
relevant. Thus, Corporate Sustainability creates long term stakeholder value, not
only by becoming green, but considering all ecological, social, and economic
aspects of Business operations while, at the same time, upleveling communication
through full transparency.
The definition given by the Brundtland Commission (1987) on Sustainable
Development that . . .meets the needs of the present without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet their own needs can easily be applied to
businesses that thrive to stay around for the next decades. To concretise this
approach, Elkington (1997) developed the Triple Bottom Line approach for company
reporting, by assuming business goals are long-term inseparable from the
surrounding environments and societies (in a short term, this might be possible,
however).
Assuming the willingness of business to endure by meeting the challenges in the
areas of the Triple Bottom Line, new innovative approaches are needed that go far
beyond the traditional CSR concepts. Social Innovation could be the best known
approach today to achieve the needed Corporate Sustainability.