TyroCity

Discussion on: Actions to take dictated by the sustainability lens to operate a business

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Angel Paudel

Business plan, usually used as a way to describe the path to use for the next 3-5 yrs. for a project is a written document which provides a detailed plan and ways to carry that ahead. It also provides a base for the operation of the business (Chawla, 2015). It is thus encouraged in the current world to focus on sustainable growth of the business while working/developing a business plan. The plan should focus on people, planet, and profit to address sustainability. This helps the business avoid getting into any trouble in the near future.

These are the tree actions that one can take as dictated by the sustainability lens:

Weak Ties : Consider a business which just sticks to the resources within and is strongly behind their ideology and process like Nokia at its prime. They were doing fantastically well but other companies caught them off and innovated so much that they left Nokia behind to struggle and get back in the race. Thus, weak ties which basically includes the relationship outside of the closer network brings in new perceptive and information all helping towards having a new way of thinking. The weak ties are not actually weak but are called so because they fall outside the traditional network (Larson, 2012). For example, considering that you’re in the age 1800s and have to explore an unknown territory with no or very badly made map. What would you do? You can ask the close friends, family, relatives, and acquaintances to learn more on what they know about the terrain. To know the survival techniques, ways at navigating through the area, you must have to go beyond that circle and ask people from diverse walks of life with some experience on such voyage/adventure. This will require you to initiate new relationships to acquire more information to move ahead. This relationship with those people is called as weak ties.

System Thinking: It is an entrepreneurial innovation process which views a business interdependent with both complex living and nonliving systems. System thinking can open up a different way of thinking for a business and lead to innovative business model (Ackoff, 1994). While we think about a river, we often recall the smooth flowing of water, people roaming around, a fishing spot and alike. But we miss out a lot of things like how the water comes in the river, the process of evaporation, human settlement around the edges of the river and lot more. Thus, system thinking enables one to look into the depth and allows businesses to see those hidden opportunities and linkages in a wider context like in the example of A river where focus towards the human settlement in the edge of the river was not often considered with a river (Larson, 2012).

Molecular Thinking: As the name suggests, it involves thinking in a molecule (micro) level of the situation or problem. All the small details that can impact the people, planet, and profit must be properly addressed under this. It also enables one to have a clear picture to start a business while analyzing all the aspects of it at a microscopic level (Larson, 2012). This can also be considered as a subset (representational) of system thinking as it provides an important outlook on components which normally are not visible. It can thus open up possibilities which were never thought of with innovative opportunities to address and substitute dangerous materials. Fuji can be a good example of this process. In the earlier stage when they were into the market for film-based and when it was almost phased out. They looked into the smaller details and identified the same chemical that’s used towards making film can work as a good anti-aging cream and thus they started working as a cosmetics which did help the business survive and generate profits to work further into it. They also cut down almost one-third of their workforce after careful analysis of the workforce utilization which wasn’t practiced by any other organization at that age but provide a good move while we look back at it. Thus, molecular thinking enables a business to look at deeper, smaller elements of a business functioning, operation and alike and helps get new insights while also removing/replacing hazardous process with better ones.

References

Ackoff, R. (1994). Systems thinking and thinking systems. System Dynamics Review , 10 (2-3), 175-188.

Chawla, K. (2015). Business Planning Essentials: Preparing a Business Plan. Journal Of Advances In Business Management , 1 (3), 93-99.

Larson, A. (2012). Sustainability, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship (1st ed.). Saylor Academy.