5 Key Reasons the Fashion Industry Should Go Green

The fashion industry leaves an immensely destructive trail in its wake, from harmful pesticides used in growing and manipulating fabrics to the leached chemicals from toxic dyes; from the energy required to care for each article of clothing, to the landfill impact of worn-out clothes.  Conventional cotton alone requires a third of a pound of chemicals to make just one t-shirt.  How many t-shirts do you have sitting in your drawers?

The sustainability movement has built momentum over the last decade, but the fashion industry has been especially slow to address such concerns.  The lag can partially be attributed to the fact that the goals of consumption and those of environmentally friendly fashion seem to be fundamentally at odds.  Apparel companies have been profiting hugely from “fast fashion”; that is, selling low-cost garments whose shelf-life is, by design, short-lived.  This business model is economically and environmentally unsustainable, and fashion houses and garment manufacturers in general need to make changes if they want to maintain growth and be successful in the future.

There has to be a better way!

Read on for 5 reasons why apparel companies should be paying closer attention to sustainability: Continue Reading»

Social Innovation as Corporate Social Responsibility

Organizations that leverage business model strategy as a way to harness disruptive opportunities outside the current operating structure can secure powerful competitive advantage. From Apple’s integrated product and service ecosystem to Zipcar’s car sharing model, business model thinking is critical to good strategy development in today’s global operating environment. When it comes to strategy, I’ve long been interested in the relationship between an organization’s purpose or mission, their corporate citizenship or social responsibility efforts and their business model. How integrated, or not, are these fundamental business practices?

Traditional corporate social responsibility (CSR) first became a business topic in the 1960s with the advent of the global company, as a way to ensure all stakeholders of the organization, beyond just shareholders, were being treated fairly in the pursuit of profit. CSR gets a bad rap from critics who say it distracts executives from the businesses of revenue growth, and that values-centric businesses and indexes of “CSR exemplars” rarely fare better financially than their less socially minded counterparts. Continue Reading»