Innovation

How consumer desire for sustainability is powering the first demand-driven, transformative megatrend—and how business leaders can make the most of this important moment.

Sustainability is rocking the business world as profoundly as any global trend of the past, from electrification to digitalization. But unlike previous revolutions, this one is being driven by consumers, for whom environmentally sound practices matter as much as price, quality, and brand. In The Demand Revolution, Andreas von der Gathen, Nicolai Broby Eckert, and Caroline Kastbjerg offer a strategic framework for winning these consumers—and taking advantage of the vast commercial opportunity presented by sustainability as the first demand-driven, transformative megatrend.

The first movers in the Demand Revolution will be able to create enduring competitive advantages and high entry barriers built around redesigned business model ecosystems and customer loyalty, the authors explain, but this will require a critical adjustment in thinking and approach. Companies, first of all, have to catch up with consumers, who see themselves on a demand curve far beyond what companies currently perceive. Business leaders must shift their focus from the cost of sustainability to its potential for generating growth and long-term profits. This, in turn, means recognizing that the classic adoption curves for innovations—and the strategic playbooks derived from those insights—no longer apply. The Demand Revolution shows business leaders how to look beyond easy fixes and incremental outcomes and instead pursue high-risk, high-reward moves geared toward the source of exponential growth: the world’s consumers.

Businesses must thoroughly evaluate the risk of deploying a new technology to avoid reputational and financial damage.

Learn how deep-tech startups in materials, biology, energy, and computing can help enterprise innovation efforts.

Successful growth in new sectors requires balancing support for the core business with investment in radical innovation.

To get employees with not-invented-here syndrome to open up to new ideas, companies may have to incentivize or push them.

Digital disruption is not always an organization’s best option. Here’s how to decide whether to disrupt or adapt.

No one can predict the future, but modularizing core capabilities can prepare companies to be ready for the unexpected.

As technology transforms the global business landscape, companies need to examine and update their internal processes for innovation to keep pace.

Insecure managers who feel threatened by subordinates who have innovative ideas need incentives to change their behavior.

A practical and timely guide that shows employees how to craft the jobs they want and managers how to shape their organizations in ways that are conducive to such job crafting.