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Sustainability is evolving quickly to become a major force in business practices and in business models. One of the best ways to think about sustainability is the triple bottom line model. This model speaks to developing business models that can show profit in three major areas – environment, economic, and social.

Sustainability holds the seeds of much of the major innovation we will see over the next 100 years. Every aspect of business can, should, and will be transformed. This represents a serious opportunity for competitive advantage in the short term and significant profit in the long term.

On June 30, 2009, Langdon Morris, one of the founders of InnovationLabs was quoted in a CNBC article about sustainability. He mentions that for most large corporations today they need to develop what we call ‘edge competence’ in order to see where innovation will take place for them. This capability is challenging for large organizations with so much investment in their ‘core’ business.

“The problem is that change rarely originates in the core,” says Morris. “It originates at what, for them, is the edge. So while they all talk a lot about core competence, what they really need to do to maintain a viable business model is to develop ‘edge competence,’ which is the ability to see change coming and respond to it before it becomes a huge problem.”

You can read the entire article here.

(the image above was taken from AM Consortium – an energy and environment consultant).