I have had more than one request to write more about sustainability and its role in radical management and the emerging Creative Economy.
- Sustainability is important. Obvious? Anyone with common sense would think so, but not necessarily economists. Some years ago, I spent an unfortunate amount of time in the World Bank listening to high-powered practitioners of the dismal science argue against the need to give explicit attention to sustainability. They would say that the use of profitability ratios like ROI and NPV obviate the need to think separately about sustainability. The argument was that all future environmental costs could in principle be incorporated in the various cost and benefit streams of these ratios. The problem here is that environmental and other costs are often not included in the financial calculations of private sector firms at all, Even if they are, the discount rate can reduce to insignificance even catastrophic events like the environmental destruction or loss of whole sectors of the economy. As Clayton Christensen has pointed out, the total reliance on these financial ratios for decision-making has led many a firm to disaster.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Is the Creative Economy Sustainable? - Forbes
