This article was originally published on Scottish Forum on Natural Capital.
Key points
- Leading businesses are increasingly focusing on a more holistic view of their business activity and realising that they are creating value beyond their financial numbers.
- Businesses need to recognise their environmental impact and dependencies to assess the risks to the long term sustainability of their business models.
- The Natural Capital Protocol is a standardised framework to identify, measure and value a business’ impacts and dependencies.
“Leading businesses are increasingly focusing on a more holistic view of their business activity and realising that they are creating value beyond their financial numbers. To them it is becoming clear that in order to sustain their business model over the long term, they need to think about their impacts and dependencies – and consequently the risks they face – across a broader range of perspectives.
This was one of the key points discussed at a breakfast event on 7 October convened by ICAS, The Institute of Directors in Scotland and the Scottish Forum on Natural Capital. Entitled “Directing for resilience: how can board members create resilient business models?”, the event was attended by a variety of business leaders from listed companies to SMEs.
Such a holistic approach needs to ensure that the business model can be sustained as a source of profits whilst ensuring that sufficient innovation – disruptive as well as incremental – is also occurring. It also needs to address the impacts and dependencies of its activities on a whole range of other “stakeholders” such as employees, the local community and broader society, and the natural environment (natural capital) – as well as ensuring that everyone in the organisation is “doing the right thing” and maintaining the organisation’s integrity and reputation…”
Read on at: Scottish Forum on Natural Capital.
