siliconindia | | July 20178IN MY OPINIONHeadquartered in Stockholm, Sustainia offers management consulting services that help business achieve rapid organizational development by assisting them in the areas of environmental issues, social responsibility, management of risks, and development of sustainable products & services.e live in a leader-ship-constrained world; it is one of the scarcest re-sources of our times. Today, leaders need to create systemic change if we are to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) by 2030, but few are doing so. A leader's ability to create the needed action begins with a radi-cal shift in mindset, and Sustainia's annual survey of 5,500 global leaders confirms that the time is now. For three consecutive years, Sustainia has released the Global Opportunity Report in collaboration with the UN Global Compact and DNV GL. In total, 17,500 business leaders have been consulted and it has become clear that these leaders see themselves as the new activist alongside civil society. However, the question now is how do we translate their perceptions into actions? Adopting five new principles of leadership could be the first step in the right direction:Imagination over ManagementThe top opportunity across the past three years makes it clear that leaders are the greatest believers in mature market opportunities. In 2015, water-efficient agricul-ture topped the list; in 2016, it was smart farming and now in 2017, it is smart water tech - three market op-portunities with proven technologies where regulation is already shaping the opportunity space and with a gen-eralized consumer demand. These are not early adopter markets. All three are safe bets ­ no-brainer markets, perhaps ­ and further down the op-portunity list are markets that de-mand a greater capacity for imagina-tion from leaders. One example is the market for housing in slums. Leaders rate it low, despite the fact that informal settlements are home to 12 percent of the global population. Living in slums is the fastest-growing form of lifestyle, but most managers are unable to imagine a lucrative market here.Rather than observing consumers from the outside, try to be them for a moment to experience their challenges up-close. Management has become an exercise in quantification, WLEADERSHIP PRINCIPLES TO MAKE BUSINESS THE NEW ACTIVIST FOR SYSTEMIC CHANGEBy Marianne Haahr, Project Director, Sustainia 1
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