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Redefining Products and Brands for Sustainable Impact

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Redefining Products and Brands for Sustainable Impact RESEARCH CENTRE INSIGHT BRIEFING 6 Redefining Products and Brands for Sustainable Impact. Issue: In an increasingly resource-constrained and socially challenged world, companies must focus on how to go beyond simply making their products less harmful to becoming a force for social good. Successful companies do not view the sustainability forces that are affecting their business as threats. Instead, companies see the forces as inspiring challenges that present opportunities to be more innovative with their products and services. These companies go beyond pleasing consumers and improving their competitive advantage: they contribute to a sustainable future through their core products. RESEARCH CENTRE | CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY AND SUSTAINABILITY Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability Institute AINABIL SUST ITY acy advoc • Em licy plo po ye lic rency e s ub spa • us • P ran D ta e d t ive in s an rsi a po y ty bi r ilit W a lit pu b E O n y l ta C R d e ia n N etrics • K in n c u t • M Eq cl g o co A en ui P u a /s c m t ty s g N e men • L io e le a ag age • H P m b r R n ng ea ar A n a e a e lth ti e n ld E m ity a c C n i k n ip t a o s n d t h V ri u a E s m w ti e le e o u k O b m l n S a o ln t a c e • G n S i e s a c s S • t s n u a U Y n S i F T • S • • I • C I T n L u • n A I s S o t o v u M I B • a m s N t S t i e a o T A u A r i n A n s a t Focus areas a • N a N n R b A B I i d n y l t c e e a E i p e c K v r v i I A b v i u e p t i t a l t l L b r e a s i c T r M E o u l s s u i d v o c I c i t a o d r b T S i u s T l p N s i u o c l c e r / u i t t t e p Y U y R e p s P d c • O o t • N e a e h o S • c l i I L v a r n n e R in u d a d l I u A o s o e b p s i s V s l t m e o it r C l y y e R n N • C e s E t • n ta E g n a d • g a Mult der e rd i-stakehol m s e n co t llaboration CO Y • S MMUNIT trate pact gic volunteering • Im • Solutions oriented S U Y S T I T L A I I B N A About the Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability Institute The Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability Institute was established by The Conference Board of Canada in 2016 after an extensive consultation revealed the need for a professional body to help practitioners excel in their roles. The Institute brings together business, industry, government, academia, and civil society as partners to envision a sustainable future and identify and address corporate responsibility and sustainability challenges and opportunities. We offer independent research and thought leadership that support collaboration, knowledge transfer, innovation, monitoring, and evaluation of contemporary corporate responsibility and sustainability issues. Our collaborative program of research, education, information dissemination, and engagement accelerates and scales next-generation practices in corporate responsibility and sustainability in Canada. This briefing was prepared by Coro Strandberg, President of Strandberg Consulting and associate with Canadian Business for Social Responsibility (CBSR). Some sections have been reproduced from CBSR’s The Transformational Company Guide: Quality #2—Sustainable Customer Offerings.1 1 Canadian Business for Social Responsibility, The Transformational Company Guide: Quality #2—Sustainable Customer Offerings (Toronto: CBSR, 2015). www.conferenceboard.ca/topics/crs 2 RESEARCH CENTRE | CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY AND SUSTAINABILITY Introduction The Conference Board of Canada’s Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability Institute has partnered with Canadian Business for Social Responsibility (CBSR) on an initiative to accelerate and scale corporate responsibility and sustainability across Canada. Together, these organizations are promoting the aspirational qualities to inspire Canadian organizations. In 2015, CBSR published research into the qualities of a transformational company. A key quality identified in the global research is “sustainable customer offerings.” “ Transformational companies integrate sustainability into the full life cycle of product and service design, use, and disposal, and advance sustainability through continuous improvement of core products and services.”2 Growing global resource constraints—coupled with changing customer, investor, and government expectations—are driving companies to change the way they do business. Companies are redesigning existing product portfolios to reduce dependencies on dwindling, finite resources and investing in new products and services to increase sustainability. Innovative companies are reimagining and retooling their product and service designs to minimize adverse social and environmental impacts and generate positive impacts. They set and invest in targets to improve the sustainability profile of their products and their customers. This includes environmental and social impacts related to workers, consumers, and communities. It also means re-evaluating the accessibility, usability, and affordability of products—such as applying universal design principles where products are accessible by all people regardless of income and ability. Rather than a niche green product suite, these organizations express their sustainability commitments through core products and services that measurably improve people’s lives with a significantly smaller environmental footprint. To meet the criteria of sustainable development for the future, some products are totally redesigned or eliminated altogether. When their designers invent or renew a product, they ensure that its formula is enhanced through improved biodegradability and water impacts, the use of renewable or responsibly sourced raw materials, or improvements to the product’s in-use energy efficiency. Innovation teams look for ways to add beneficial social or environmental features to make their products not just less bad, but more good. Drivers and Benefits Increasingly, customers seek products and services that are produced and consumed in a socially and environmentally responsible way. Customers expect companies to contribute solutions to global social and environmental issues. Equally, businesses are operating in a resource-constrained world, with growing global competition for finite natural resources and a decline in the ecosystems that underpin them. This creates a business imperative to reinvent core products and services to mitigate rising and volatile raw materials prices and longer-term business risk. Consequently, this leads to reducing costs and increasing revenues from new customer value propositions. Depending on the approach, these are some of the 2 Ibid. www.conferenceboard.ca/topics/crs 3 RESEARCH CENTRE | CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY AND SUSTAINABILITY benefits that await companies that transition their product portfolios to sustainability. The benefits allow companies to: • meet evolving customer expectations; • reduce costs from reduced materials and • increase revenues through marketplace energy use; differentiation; • anticipate and prepare for government regulations • build a positive brand and reputation with key and standards; stakeholders; • improve supply-chain security; • win supply contracts; • foster innovation; • attract, retain, and engage employees. Sustainable Product Development Approaches and Examples Here are four examples of companies transitioning their product portfolios to generate sustainability benefits. Marks & Spencer Marks & Spencer (M&S), a global U.K.-based retailer, has an ambition that all of the three billion products it sells every year are well on the path to being truly sustainable by 2025.3 Exhibit 1 depicts the company’s approach to sustainable product development.4 As can be seen in the exhibit, M&S conducts Exhibit 1 thorough scientific reviews of its products and Marks & Spencer’s Approach to Sustainable their supply chains to zero in on social and Product Development environmental “hot spots.” By identifying the key Product category Improved product impacts, the company can pinpoint where to focus sustainability its efforts. To supplement this scientific evidence, Track and M&S meets with stakeholders to understand their H report analysis views and perspectives. As well, internal specialists progress collaborate with other consumer products Identifying and Measuring companies and independent experts to ensure the Plan A research and analysis are robust. As science and Product Attributes stakeholder views develop, and the company’s own thinking and expertise evolves, the research and Approve Identify plan A analysis are continuously updated. attribute solutions Through this due diligence—hot spot analysis and risk assessments—M&S typically finds a handful of big impact issues within each product category. Latest science Stakeholder experts Internal experts These are prioritized for both internal cross- functional collaboration and external engagement Note: “Plan A” refers to Marks and Spencer’s sustainability vision and of suppliers and customers: the next step on strategy. Source: Marks & Spencer, How We Define Plan A Product Attributes. 3 Marks and Spencer, Plan A 2025 Commitments (London, U.K.: M&S Corporate, 2017), https://corporate.marksandspencer.com/documents/plan-a/plan-a-2025-commitments.pdf. 4 Marks and Spencer, How We Define Plan A Product Attributes (London, U.K.: M&S Corporate, 2015), https://corporate.marksandspencer.com/documents/plan-a-our-approach/how-we-define-plana-product-attributes-june2015.pdf. www.conferenceboard.ca/topics/crs 4 RESEARCH CENTRE | CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY AND SUSTAINABILITY the journey to improve products’ sustainability is an opportunity to drive sustainable product impacts and features.
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