First Steps in Making the Business Case for Sustainability

Introduction to Change and Change Agents

Welcome to the first class of Become a Sustainable Business Change Agent.
This week we introduce you to several people who are making changes and talk about the class and the entire specialization. We also begin to think about what type of changes you should look for at the start of your change agent career. Finally, we discuss what a good proposal has to do to be approved. The proposal has to convince decision-makers that your change helps the company or organization. So you need to make sure that the right people support your idea, that the right person receives it and that you have made a sound case for the sustainability change you are proposing.
During the next classes we will help you learn the tools to put together a powerful proposal and to identify the key people who will influence your idea being implemented.
We hope by the end of this specialization you will have a proposal for a change in your company, or have the tools so when that opportunity arises you can be an agent of positive change.

Finding a good first project

This week we discuss what you should be trying to accomplish with your first sustainability change project and give you some ideas of the types of projects that are likely to be successful We also introduce the notion of establishing a baseline so you can measure the effect of your change

Financial Analysis for the Business Case

An important aspect of making the business case of change is to show the likely financial impact of the change Ideally, we will find improvements that increase profits either by saving the company money or by increasing sales To demonstrate these financial benefits we use a standard tool from financial analysis - Net Present Value analysis (NPV) The idea underlying Net Present Value analysis is that we estimate all the cash inflows and outlays associated with a project, then through a technique called discounting (or computing the present value) we shift all the cash flows into the present so they can be compared You cannot compare an outlay made to day directly to a cash flow or profit to be received in two or three years Combining the present value of the cash flows - adding the present value of benefits and subtracting the present value of outlays - gives us the Net Present Value If the NPV is positive the benefits, adjusted for time, more than offset the costs and the project enhances the value of the company. If the NPV is negative then the monetary benefits do not more than offset the costs But there may be non-monetary reasons for pursuing the project This is where we begin to consider the reasons for companies becoming sustainable discussed in Week 2 of this module The business case includes the financial impact and non-monetary sustainability impacts of the change

Starting to Make the Business Case for Sustainability

In this module we cover two topics: The benefits for companies of being sustainable and aspects of our economic system that prevent/discourage companies form being more sustainable The goal of the module is to give you the first tools for making the business case for sustainability The benefits of sustainability will be important as you put together your proposal for change If you work in the sustainable business arena very long you will need to know some of the vocabulary and economics that cause some of our environmental and social problems These are market failures We'll introduce three: externalities, common access resource problems and information failures

Sustainable Thinking

The Business School at the University of Colorado Denver wants to help you become a change agent for sustainable business We hope that with the skills and concepts you gain from this specialization that you will help your business reduce its social and environmental impact Being a change agent is hard It takes courage and passion and knowledge To implement change also requires being able to make the case for that change in terms that people in your company or organization respond to and understand
We begin our journey to being a change agent by introducing sustainability thinking Sustainable business requires a new way of seeing and thinking about how business operates By beginning to think sustainably you will be better able to identify ways that your company can improve and explain those changes to decision makers
We will look at 6 ways of thinking related to sustainability:
• Life-Cycle Thinking
• Long-Term Thinking
• Circular Thinking
• Resilience Thinking
• Systems Thinking
• Context Thinking