Customer Reviews

The Sustainable Company: How to Create Lasting Value through Social and Environmental Performance

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This landmark work helps managers assess the business value of sustainability. Many companies are keen to show that they are responsible corporate citizens. They are taking lots of actions on the environmental and social front, but have no idea which ones are important for their businesses. This book offered me a structured management process for thinking about "stakeholder" value-at-risk and value-opportunities. I highly recommend it for anyone looking for a set of practical guidelines to integrating stakeholders into their company's core activities. It helped me to make the business case for greater corporate responsibility in a language that other managers could understand

This book is an effective primer on this important cultural trend and is divided into three parts:
(1) The basic ideas behind sustainable development and value
(2) Four examples of sustainable companies
(3) Some business tools for creating and measuring stakeholder value

In Part I, Chris Laszlo presents the key concepts, history, importance of developing an increasingly conscious, sustainable and responsible business. He covers all the major elements of sustainability (such as triple bottom-line, various stakeholders, measurements, ethics etc.) but in language that does not reduce these exciting topics and trends to dull, academic abstraction. Most interesting is Part II on successful corporate models of sustainability (such as Patagonia clothing, ARCO) which give a real human face to the concepts. Many managers will find most useful the charts, graphs, models for creating, communicating and managing an effective sustainability program. Its not an MBA-level of detail, but a solid, conceptual starting point that will be appreciated to those newer to these ideas. However, I found his language a more academically labored in Part III, reducing its effectiveness to engage. Other popular books on the topic worth reading are "Natural Capitalism" and "Cradle-to-Cradle."

Rather than take an integrative, systems approach, Laszlo prescribes 8 disciplines which seem to add another layer onto corporate strategy. This is at odds to the CSR strategies employed by many of the leading companies today who integrate social responsibility into their core business. The nail in the coffin for this book, and a point which highlights the superficial nature of the value creation toolkit, is the forward was written by the CEO of BP in January of 2003.

Chris "CC Storm" Laszlo has done it again! Another best seller that informs as well as it entertains. He makes compelling arguments promoting environmental sustainability via fuel cells operating on a Slim Jim and Mellow Yellow mixture rather than Hydrogen. The author is no doubt a briliant business and social strategist, but he is a really nice guy, good looking and available too! I can't wait for the sequel coming in December: "Son of Sustainable Company". Happy reading!

This may be the worst book ever written. The "arguments" are not only circular, but contradict one another. Terms are poorly defined and lack continuity. The focus for change is inappropriately placed on the business side of the business/consumer relationship. I'm dumber for having read it.