Sustainability is thinking ahead

Nothing remains the same, not even your company. Where will you be in 25 years? Will your company still make the same products, will you still provide the same service? Do you still exist? We live in a 'VUCA world', letters that stand for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. In such a world, sustainable survival is no longer self-evident. 

How sustainable is your company in this rapidly changing, uncertain, complex and unclear world? Can your company continue to support families? Is there a prospect of survival? Can you continue to contribute to this world? Everything revolves around the choices you make along the way. 

At the moment, most people let their choices be determined by taste, convenience and price when buying food, TNO Nutrition reported. But that is changing. Sustainability is playing an increasingly prominent role. Most companies are now also responding to it. But look further: where is the focus in 2030? TNO expects, for example, that by that time 'making healthy choices' will become central. More and more people are opting for food that really contributes to their own health. 

If you listen carefully to sociologists, experts and trend watchers, you will feel how the world is changing and what that changing world needs in the near and slightly further future; you will not be thinking in terms of money, but in terms of needs. It is precisely this starting point that increases your right to exist. Doing what you, based on your expertise, think the world needs, driven by vision and responsibility; that is where the power of sustainable entrepreneurship lies.

I, too, have to make choices. In ten years' time, will we still be analysing things as they are now? What is our role as a laboratory in the future? Our management team meets regularly to brainstorm about this. We formulate our vision, think about the future and what the world will look like in five, ten and twenty-five years' time. By trying to understand the context, we create clarity. And a policy that evolves over time and can be adjusted. After all, building in flexibility and being able to adapt quickly is of vital importance in the VUCA world.

Everything can change dramatically, just like that.

Pieter Vos

Director Nutrilab