Sustainability for Different Stakeholders

Nota bene: I don't really know what happened to my comment (and my two trackbacks) at Tom Davenport's article yesterday - they just didn't appear and maybe fell prey to censorship. Too long? Did I say something wrong? Update: Comment is now there.

Today, however, another Harvard Business Publishing article caught my attention. Christopher Meyer thinks that "We need a definition of Sustainability". He writes

An activity is sustainable when all costs are internalized, because if the costs are too high, the activities stop.

and

The key principles are:

(1) Measure the system life-cycle costs in all dimensions we care about
(2) Internalize those costs rather than wave them away or throw them over some regulatory transom.

This is what I answered:
Christopher, these are indeed some interesting thoughts on sustainability. Connecting it with costs definitely makes sense for businesses and their leaders.

Your proposal to internalize all costs would however mean a lot of new legislation, wouldn't it? And the measurement, as Patrick already mentioned, for many of these externalities is mostly not really realistic.
Just one example: measuring the impact of all additives that shorten human life (and by how much they do so) - a statistical nightmare. And the results would mostly come to late - a lot of people would have lived shorter than they were supposed to.

I believe an approach, that uses different definitions for different stakeholders might work best.

Let's use the cost-based model to talk to business and politics and another definition for the other stakeholders who are not so much concerned with costs but still understand that if they considerably damage the planet, their kids will be worse off.

If and when the measurements and laws for those products for which it is viable are in place

and

if (that's another big if) a majority of consumers are aware of the impact that they have by choosing one product over the other, change might come far quicker and with less externalities (in form of collateral damage to people and environment and a blown up governmental sector) than by relying solely on internalizing costs.

Therefore for me, Sustainability: "The present generation meeting its needs without prejudicing the ability of future generations meeting theirs"

and

"An activity is sustainable when all costs are internalized" might work quite well.

My thinking was also triggered by working on a business directory that will soon be released in México: Las Paginas Verdes (The Green Pages), an initiative by New Ventures México, which will offer an overview of sustainable products and services.