Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build a Competitive Advantage

Daniel C. Esty, Andrew S. Winston

In Green to Gold, authors Esty and Winston lay out the unprecedented challenges that face companies worldwide, demonstrating that for the determined, these challenges create only opportunity. Green to Gold describes how sustainability can create competitive advantage - a compelling illustration of this is that the top 50 'Wave-Riders' (those capitalising on the 'Green Wave') including BP, Shell and Johnson & Johnson, significantly outperformed both the S&P 500 and the FTSE 100 from 1996 to 2006.

The book creates an elaborate methodology for identifying and ranking 'WaveRider' companies, showing the tips and tricks they use for sustainable products and strategies. The key strategies and tactics needed are clearly demonstrated via the detailed interviews and explorations of numerous real-life examples of corporate environmental initiatives. Examples include those at IKEA, Toyota, BP, Nike and GE, where the book catalogues insightful guidance on building a strategic eco-advantage. Esty and Winston explore the key issues of:
 

• Keeping the focus on execution while using an environmental strategy
• Coping with environmental pressures and responsibilities
• How to spark innovation to drive long-term growth
• Anticipating & managing serious business risks
• How to be stewards of the earth while simultaneously building the bottom line

Understanding the eco-advantage mindset is useful, but companies need tools to get going. This innovative strategy guide contains the tools required for executives to navigate a complex landscape of resource shortfalls, regulations and pressure from stakeholders to strive for sustainability. With environmental thinking built into central business strategy, innovation and long-term growth can really deliver bottom-line results.