Business innovation as a force for good: From doing less harm to positive impact type 1 and type 2

Abstract

Commitments of “getting to zero” or becoming a regenerative company are raising investor, customer, and employee expectations at a time when businesses are struggling just to reduce negative impacts. Executives are increasingly caught between wanting to build a better world and the reality of managing value-add activities that continue to harm people and the environment.

Businesses need to distinguish between three types of innovation impacts to maintain their credibility and legitimacy. The first is doing less harm, where the goal is to minimize social wrongs and reduce ecological footprints. The second is incremental positive impact, where the goal is to increase prosperity, regenerate nature, and improve wellbeing through initiatives that are typically of limited scope. The third is system-wide positive impact, where scalable business innovations have a discernible capacity to “move the needle” on social and global challenges such as climate change and social equity.

This conceptual paper provides a framework for assessing business innovations by type of impact and the high-leverage points needed to create desired change at the scale of the whole.