The Center for Sustainable Enterprise (CSE) at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School was established to help executives and future business leaders understand how social and environmental considerations are changing the competitive landscape of business.
The CSE provides education, research, and outreach to business students, executives, and organizations to help them benefit from the opportunities inherent in sustainable enterprise. Kenan-Flagler Business School is ranked one of the top business schools in the world for education in this arena (Beyond Grey Pinstripes, 2003); the CSE’s goal is to continually support and advance this world-class program.
What is Sustainable Enterprise?
As companies increasingly encounter pressure to incorporate social and environmental impact management into business objectives, new opportunities are emerging for innovation and strategy that leverage a sustainable approach to doing business.
Sustainable enterprise employs profitable strategies that approach social and environmental challenges as business opportunities and minimize harmful social and environmental impacts.
Sustainable enterprises measure success in terms of a “triple bottom line”:
Financial profitability
Ecological integrity
Social equity
Developing sustainable business strategies relies on innovative analysis of market opportunities and identification of solutions that frequently “leapfrog” existing products, technologies, and business solutions. Strategic innovation is a central component of sustainable enterprise, as both a means and an end of adopting sustainability strategies.
