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The importance of the “outside-in” view and the UN SDGs

In developing a purpose-led strategy, a business explores the potential to develop new products and services which benefit society and offer a sustainable return. Understanding the changing needs of customers and clients against a backdrop of systemic social and environmental challenges is a powerful stimulus to innovation and more radical thinking. In a purpose-led business growth is derived from profitable activities that help solve the problems of people and planet without adding to them. Growth and profit matter, but no longer for their own sake.

Depending on the size and scale of the business, this exploration naturally takes different forms. Key is a readiness to listen and imagine possibilities which the business may not have considered in terms of developing “goods that are truly good and services that truly serve”, given the distinctive expertise and market the business currently has, and the changing needs and expectations of existing and potential customers and clients.

image 102715 un sdgs

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been described as “the world’s business plan”. They provide one very useful source for companies seeking to challenge themselves in developing a purpose-led strategy. They offer one description of outcomes at a point in time (2030) of a system optimised for human wellbeing and a sustainable ecosystem. They describe, across a number of dimensions aspects of a ‘common good’ – the better society – that purpose-led businesses can contribute to. The common language the goals provide means they offer a framing for companies to understand how they can deliver value by serving society. 

Useful as the SDGs are, one limitation is that they are essentially a list rather than a vision. And they can be misused to simply re-badge existing work to gain external credibility rather than to challenge the business to change what it does. Many companies see the SDGs as a framework for reporting, but they are more effective in developing the core business strategy. Using the SDGs as a challenge in this way enables a business to consider how to create opportunities through contributing to the better society envisaged by the goals. In this way, the motivation for meeting the goals stems from the purpose of the business and so part of its core business strategy, rather than being seen as an additional reporting or compliance activity.

Some ways to think about the SDGs in the context of strategy:

  • Mitigation of harms – explore and acknowledge the SDGs where the company has a negative impact and take steps to minimise/eradicate these harms
  • Innovate – what opportunities do the SDGs present to the business? How might the business innovate to transition away from harmful practices to new products, services or ways of operating to positively contribute to meeting the SDGs?
  • Collective action – does the business have the knowledge and expertise to contribute to structural changes needed to deliver the transformation at scale envisaged by the SDGs? Can it use its influence and expertise to contribute to wider systematic change, through collaborating with others to help make progress that cannot be made by one business on its own?

There are a range of external inputs such as benchmarks which can be helpful in contextualising the SDGs in particular the World Benchmarking Alliance and Future-Fit Business.

Businesses (and others) have, until now, considered and managed many of the world’s sustainability challenges in isolation from one another – environmental and social issues have typically been treated as separate domains. This is rooted in a paradigm of the world as a machine, where problems are best solved by breaking them down into smaller parts, and is unsuited to addressing complex, interrelated sustainable development issues. To move towards a sustainable future, businesses must take a more systemic perspective that recognises the true complexity of, and the interactions between, the challenges faced by our worlde

Forum for the Future – A Compass for Just and Regenerative Business (p.12)