What Value Cycle Leadership Is & Why It Matters - Gregory C. Unruh - Harvard Business Review

Last month, I had the opportunity to collaborate with the World Economic Forum's Sustainability Initiative team on a sustainable supply chain workshop, held as part of Summer Davos. Many issues that surfaced during the workshop focused on leadership — and they are the same issues that surface in my executive education teaching. Business leaders have been talking about "closed loop, cradle to cradle" value cycling of materials for a long time. Materials in a value cycle stay inside a closed loop, revolving from the suppliers, where they originate, to the manufacturer and on to the customer, who at the end of their useful life passes them back to the manufacturer where they are reincarnated into next season's model. The vision is elegant and simple to understand, but we have only a few examples operating today. The challenge, as the WEF workshop illustrated, lies in the nature of value cycle leadership.

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