The Better Business Opportunity

As business leaders, we have a unique opportunity to make a difference. Not only for our companies and teams, but for the larger picture: our communities, and even our planet. We just need to know where to start, and then take one small step at a time. The Better Business Playbook is intended to help you do just that.

About 20 years ago, I moved from market research positions at Unilever and GfK to become responsible for one of Sweden’s pioneering sustainability brands, Grumme. I stayed for a five year period and learned a lot. Still today, Grumme is considered one of the most environmentally friendly brands in the country. A country that is known as one of the top ten environmentally sustainable countries in the world. And one of the most innovative. The brand had less than a decade earlier pivoted from a traditional household cleaning brand with roots going back to 1882, to a brand with a focus on environmental sustainability. Why? Because someone in the company had identified a business opportunity in the evolving Swedish values and beliefs and saw an opportunity to do well by doing good. Grumme liquid detergents quickly became a commercial success and grew to become a serious competitor to Unilever’s and P&G’s liquid detergents.

Today, sustainability is so much more than it was two decades ago, and many companies are already capitalizing on this moment to become a force for good. However, many more need to start considering the opportunity because good business is simply good for business! So where might you start? How might your company evolve into a Better Business?

The Better Business Playbook is designed to inspire you, as a business leader, to go beyond business as usual – and consider the vast strategic opportunities connected to Better Business. Starting with the opportunities that reside in environmental sustainability and climate change. While these issues contain imminent threats that need to be urgently addressed, they also offer the kind of hairy, wicked, thorny challenges that business is particularly well-equipped to figure out and able to do good in the process. Let’s take a first step by taking a look at why you might want – and urgently need – to consider it. And then learn from those currently in the frontline.

Read more about the urgent need for Better Business, and download the Better Business Playbook here.

Elisabet Lagerstedt

Elisabet Lagerstedt is the founder and director of Future Navigators. As a trusted advisor, consultant, and Executive Coach, she helps business leaders navigate beyond business as usual to build Better Business and co-create a better future - through insight, strategy, innovation, and transformation. Elisabet is also the author of Better Business, Better Future (2022) and Navigera in i Framtiden (2018).