Guiding Corporate Sustainability

In this Ivey Business Journal Q&A, Ivey Business School Professor Tima Bansal—one of the sustainability field’s most cited scholars—explains why there is nothing anti-capitalist about sustainability, while making the case for old-school capitalists to embrace Ivey’s ambitious Innovation North initiative, which aims to save the planet (and capitalism) by disrupting traditional approaches to innovation. She says sustainability suffers from two issues. First, some people think that sustainability is about asking them to do less. The second issue is that many people, including executives, just don’t know what to do about sustainability and how to do it. Bansal claims we need to reframe the discussion as prosperity—an opportunity to realize better health and community. Instead of talking about sustainability as reforming capitalism, we need to think about sustainability as innovating for prosperity. Innovation North assembles senior business leaders, academics, and world-renowned systems thinkers every three months to discuss how to innovate the innovation process. It is working with partner companies to create a toolkit that bakes systems thinking into innovation—the Innovation North Compass. This uses both ideas (as in the stage-gate model) and solutions (as in design thinking). Ultimately, Bansal says, a systems thinker thinks differently than how we teach people to think in business schools. They work though problems differently, not looking for the right answer but instead looking for patterns and possibilities.