Thursday, March 29, 2012 by Tara Gallagher

Can you find substitutes for the rare earth minerals in your products? Reduce water consumption in manufacturing in water-scarce areas by 80%? Eliminate waste in product design?

As our world adds another two billion people by 2045 and we confront an increasingly resource-constrained future, bold goals can spur needed innovation.

The bolder your sustainability goals, the more likely it is that their success depends on necessity. If the price of water triples due to shortages, we have to figure out how to use less. If there will not be any more Herculaneum, then we have to find a way to design without it.

This brings us to Japan.

This week, Japan took another nuclear reactor off-line for maintenance, leaving just one of its 54 reactors on-line. The final reactor is also scheduled for maintenance soon and it is likely Japan will enter the peak energy-demand summer months without any functional nuclear power at all. For a country that depended on nuclear energy for one-third of its electricity until the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi in March, 2011, this is extraordinary.

​What effect will this burden of necessity have on Japan’s entrepreneurs? Five years from now will we see Japanese companies leading their global competitors in energy efficiency, lower cost renewable energy options and cleaner fossil fuels? I think we will.

What can we learn from this?

Find the areas of your business where external pressures create the greatest urgency and develop your boldest sustainability goals to address these issues. Don’t be afraid to be visionary. Then give the brightest minds in your company the space to create the needed sustainable solutions. Let them amaze us.

The most pressing needs of the future demand game-changing innovations, not baby steps.