Innovative Actions

Sustainability

Innovative Actions place the highest priorities on sustainability and the efforts to revert climate change. Sustainability is at the core of our business and working practices and we look, where possible, to lead on initiatives that have a direct impact or to champion sustainability as a key theme within projects we are involved in.

Behind our thinking, choices and actions are these key concerns.

The Perfect Storm

Society is currently facing a perfect storm of global threats. We are deep in the midst of:
  • A financial crisis
  • An economic crisis
  • A climate change crisis
  • An oil depletion crisis
  • A crisis of social disintegration
  • A crisis of widespread distrust in the political process.
These apparently disparate components of global crisis are in fact inextricably interconnected just as the World’s environmental, social and economic systems are wholly interdependent.

Innovative Actions is in no doubt that by far the greatest threat is that posed by climate change. We now understand that changes in the concentration of CO2, and other less common greenhouse gases as a result of misguided and out-of-control economic growth will trigger an ecological catastrophe of staggering proportions unless the right actions are taken.

We must, urgently and progressively, begin to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, immediately, and embark on a very different course – a coordinated, comprehensive transition to an economy that is no longer dependent on hydrocarbon fuels and no longer emits climate-changing levels of carbon.

The Opportunity

Innovative Actions believes that, in combination, the challenges of climate change, energy security, and economic development should be viewed as breathtaking opportunities currently disguised as seemingly insoluble problems.

The role of the Innovative Actions team is to help prepare the businesses, public sector procurers and educational organisations to take on the challenge and realise the massive opportunities offered. Facing a future redefined by rapid change, new markets, new regulatory frameworks, new measures of business success and new dynamics between business and society, only those organisations able to learn, adapt, reform, re-align, evolve and lead, will survive and prosper.

Innovative Actions believes that the “sustainability-intelligent organisation” has the potential to be the business model of the future.

For the first time we have an in-depth understanding of the special capabilities that such an organisation must possess and of the enormous potential value to society (and to the organisation itself) that application of such sustainability intelligence can unlock. The sustainability-intelligent organisation will:

  • Be highly sustainability-literate and systems-smart at all levels
  • Be skilled in identifying and applying an effective and relevant body of knowledge (BOK)
  • Operate under a system of leadership and governance that totally supports the drive to sustainability.
  • Have a clear and purposeful vision of what it means to be a sustainability-intelligent organisation and the benefits to business and society that flow from this
  • Skilfully and strategically deploy management systems which enable it to assess its own sustainability and value-creation performance and put in place the measures needed to continuously improve.
  • Follow a business model and strategies designed specifically to unlock the maximum potential (co-)value and sustainability gain inherent in any development or business initiative.
  • Be value-network ready
  • Be transparently open to external inputs and feedback and willingly to share knowledge and experience with all others in the value-networks it helps to form.

Value through Sustainability™

Under the title Value through Sustainability™, the Innovative Actions Partnership has developed a unique and powerful capacity building model for creating and supporting sustainability intelligent organisations and value networks, fit-for-purpose in the context of a post-carbon future. The Value through Sustainability™ programme can be customised for application to different sectors. Principal amongst these is the construction sector where investment in natural and human capital is huge, environmental and social impacts extreme, opportunities for improved performance exceptional and the demand for sustainability intelligent organisations probably highest of any sector.