Sustainability means opportunities for those firms acting globally to help meet their clients' demands Marc Epstein likes to talk about the Toyota Prius. Not the car itself, but more Toyota's strategy behind the development and the delivery of the first mainstream electric/gas hybrid car. In an incredibly forward-thinking moment, Toyota's leadership brought together a team to develop what it was calling "the car of the 21st century" way back in 1993, long before it was fashionable to think of an automobile's impact on the future. Even more innovative, perhaps, was the team Toyota assembled to work on the car. The traditional hierarchal model was replaced by what Epstein calls "an equal-access system of communication," which included leadership, designers, engineers, marketers and production plant crew chiefs.
"The Prius was a huge risk, but it has been an absolute bonanza for Toyota," says Epstein, author of Making Sustainability Work: Best Practices in Managing and Measuring Corporate Social, Environmental and Economic Impacts. "And it got first-mover advantage in the marketplace and with consumers, which led to Toyota controlling over 50 percent of the hybrid market even though there are more than 25 hybrids out there right now."
And since the Prius debuted in the U.S. in 2001, Toyota has sold more than 1 million hybrid cars, twice as many as its nearest competitor. Toyota is now the No. 2 seller of automobiles worldwide, and its brand value has increased 47 percent since the Prius was launched, according to Interbrand.
| What's Your Carbon Footprint? Firms take on travel to reduce impact |
| Shannon Schuyler spends a lot of her time thinking of ways to reduce the carbon footprint at PricewaterhouseCoopers. "We look at everything from travel to paper usage to the impact of our employees commuting," says Schuyler, who is a managing director with PwC. "More and more we're finding that clients are demanding to see what we're doing internally before they decide to have us work with them on a sustainability project." Although the new initiative is only a few months old, Schuyler has already found ways for PwC to reduce its overall impact. "As a company, we're one of the largest purchasers of rental cars. So, we've gone out to the car-rental firms and have encouraged them to add more hybrids to their fleet," she says. "And then we'll want to work more with the ones that do." |
| "Making a difference: PwC is looking to rent more hybrid cars while A.T. Kearney is developing a new delivery model that relies less on air travel." |
 Another area that drives up a carbon footprint in a hurry is air travel. "Obviously, we travel a lot, and that has a very big impact," she says. "But we're also looking into ways to reduce our air travel." Daniel Mahler, a partner at A.T. Kearney and the firm's global coordinator for sustainability, is also trying to reduce air travel. When Mahler began to calculate A.T. Kearney's carbon footprint, he discovered that about 79 percent of it was due to air travel. And of that 79 percent, three-quarters of it was client related. "Travel is not a sacred cow," Mahler says. "We understand that we need to provide great service to our clients, but do we need to have five consultants on site full time five days a week? Can we deliver the same quality of work without traveling like we have traditionally done?" These are the questions Mahler is asking as he and A.T. Kearney embark on an aggressive campaign to become carbon neutral by 2010. As part of the pledge, the firm is working on "non-traditional delivery models" of its consulting services that include client service models not so heavily dependent on air travel. In addition, A.T. Kearney has appointed sustainability "czars" in each of its profit centers and will begin semi-annual progress measurements this year. |
There's a lesson in there for consulting firms, Epstein says. "Big risks lead to big rewards," he says. "There are huge opportunities out there for consulting firms willing to take a risk."
Several have, particularly in the midst of skyrocketing client demand for sustainability work.
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