Systematic Review - Network for Business Sustainability

In Practice
The contribution of long-term collaboration between
NGOs and companies to enable sustainable business
practices is widely recognized.
In Practice
In the development of the Tata Nano,
the early integration of suppliers into the
NPD process facilitated their input into
component design, led to substantially lower
costs and helped eliminate unnecessary
frills while incorporating features valued by
mass markets. 7 Adapted from Ray and Ray
(2011).
The conservation group World Wildlife
Foundation (WWF) has adopted a series of
collaborative and challenging partnerships
with business. It provides companies
insights into sustainability challenges and
approaches, and helps create stakeholder
engagement opportunities to support
business becoming more resilient. It
works with individual companies and
across industry sectors, bringing together
consumer groups, policy makers and
investors to help drive systemic change.
WWF’s business partnerships include
HSBC, Marks and Spencer, Unilever,
Lafarge, Nokia, Coca-Cola, Barclays, BT,
Vodaphone, Tetra Pak, SABMiller and IKEA.
Adapted from Bendell (2000); Elkington
(1998); and Wymer & Samu (2003).
3. New innovation platforms can be tested: e.g.
reverse innovation, jugaad innovation and resourceconstrained
innovation
The principle of co-operation is greatly extended
by firms experimenting with sustainable innovation
in bottom-of-the-pyramid (i.e. low socioeconomic)
markets. The value of co-operation is recognized by
exponents of “reverse innovation” (a trickle-up effect,
where innovations are first used in developing countries
and then applied in developed countries) and “frugal”
or resource-constrained innovation (a strategy whereby
resource inputs are minimized, thereby reducing the
end product’s cost without loss of quality). The latter
approach is also referred to as “jugaad innovation,”
from a Hindi word that translates roughly as “an
innovation fix,” referring to harnessing ingenuity to
locate opportunities and improvise simple solutions
(Radjou et al., 2012). See Appendix 6 for examples and
Appendix 3 for definitions.
These novel collaborations are not well understood,
particularly regarding an organization’s place in
systems-level co-evolution of a sustainable society
(Loorbach et al., 2010). However, co-operating with
environmentally neutral stakeholders or “naysayers”
may constrain firms in achieving their sustainability
objectives (Wagner, 2007), and firms may need to
create new networks of relationships of willing players
outside of established vested interests (Klein Woolthuis,
2010).
7 The Tata Nano has been critiqued by some environmental NGOs for its lack of green credentials. However, by making available a car to people
for whom cars were previously not affordable, the Nano arguably addresses the social equity dimension of sustainability. The case illustrates the
frequent difficulty reconciling the three pillars of the Triple Bottom Line.
Innovating for Sustainability 39