Sustainability as Adaptability. The new turbulent and unpredictable business environment has created a new type of sustainability challenge.

Companies can create advantage by adapting to changes in the business, ecological, and social spheres. In the past few years CEOs has been paying attention to Corporate Social Responsibility, ethics and sustainability. The global survey of BCG & MIT Sloan Management review shows more than twothirds (of 4,700 respondents) agreed that sustainability is essential to competitiveness. Threequarters said it is permanently on their agendas. Generally, companies principles to make decisions about beyond business issues are 6, but sometimes there is confusion, because inconsistency among them : 1. License to operate: Merely following societys implicit rules and expectations can miss opportunities to create a positive advantage. 2. Business Ethics: Doing things ethically is laudable, but ethical principles do not necessarily providing a framework for making tradeoffs. 3. Reputation: Excessive concern in this area could cause making decisions focus in perceptions, without considering the competitive advantage. 4. Sustainability: A commitment with future generations does not necessarily address tradeoffs between present and future value. 5. Shared Value: this approach is good, but does not prescribe practical ways to achieve the union between profits and social contribution. 6. Shareholder Value: For some firms is the unique goal, but is not good to deal with social and ecological issues. This lack of clarity can have serious consequences, and present the following challenges: 1. A gap between intention and action: without practical guidelines, concrete intentions is very difficult. 2. Misaligned and insufficient actions: focusing on the wrong issues. 3. Sustainability Issues Underweighted: Without precision, sustainability loses credibility in the boardroom. Approaches to ecosocial advantage The ability to adapt the business model to changes in the ecological, social, and economic areas over both short and long time horizons is called ecosocial advantage. There are eight typical approaches to building a sustainable business model, related with each area mentioned above.

a) Ecological Sphere a.1) Minimize consumption by improving resource productivity (e.g. diminishing energy consumption). a.2) Substitute resources. a.3) Replenish resources. (e.g. the use of the waste of one specie to feed others in acquaculture) a.4) Reduce pollution and waste. b) Social Sphere b.1) Help customers and employees realize their ethical and ecological aspirations. b.2) Create new markets and access. c) Economic Sphere c.1) Continuously adapt the business model. c.2) Build an adaptive ecosystem.