Today the climate, natural resources and energy production capability are marked as 'under severe threat' because of the mad rush of human civilization to attain growth and development. The truth is that without any of these 'under a threat' entities, the planet earth cannot sustain any life and thus no advanced human civilization. The buzzword of the day is sustainability.
Sustainability is the force that is driving innovation today. Businesses and research institutions across the globe are focusing on development of operational models that allow the best relation between ensuring the sustainability without giving up on the innovation factor. Based on the concept of sustainable innovation, n number of business models are emerging, a host of new markets have opened up and businesses with a significant edge over traditional business model based competition have started to gain control over the world economy.
A number of traditional companies are now exploring how sustainable innovation can help them enhance their bottom lines and at the same time continue delivering the top quality to their customers, improving returns to the key stake holders and ensure full regulatory compliance.
One key case study in the evolution of sustainable innovation is the emergence and rapidly growing acceptance of internet banking services and electronic bill payment services. Primarily, the factor behind emergence of internet banking was to help banks and lending institutions cut down their operational costs. Thus, the original internet banking system stopped at very rudimentary functionality. Gradually, with increase in pressure from regulatory and observer bodies, the BFSI sector had to take up the mettle of innovation.
Yet the key players did not seem interested in innovation until they were given the factor of increasing their sustainability levels along with ensuring decline in operational costs. With sustainability driven innovation by key BFSI technology suppliers like Checkfree, Metavante, Fidelity National Information Services, the scenario changed to emerge into a high level online banking and bill payment system.
This system not only covers the business and customer requirements by providing them fast and anywhere, anytime access to banking services but also by ensuring significant decline in the carbon footprint of Banking, Financial Services and Insurance sector. The footfall in bank branches has dropped down to nearly half of what it was sometime back and all the while these services are now reaching nearly double the number of people.
Sustainable innovation is about doing more than what you can by using lesser resources and creating lesser waste than your current levels. Sustainable innovation is no more an obscure aspect of corporate social responsibility but today it has become a way to enhance, optimize and develop the way businesses function. No wonder the industry pundits are saying that 'sustainable innovation is innovative innovation'.
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