But Porter understands that regulations have an economic cost. amazing cocktail colorful bartender poster He simply says that properly constructed environmental standards may, while imposing costs,
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problems will require huge investments whose principal economic payoff will be the right to continue in business. How efficiently these problems are recognized, analyzed, and addressed will determine the winners. amazing cocktail colorful bartender poster Nor is a new, unsettling variable such as the environment unprecedented. Imagine the consternation of nineteenth-century industrialists faced with child labor laws or the dismay of their successors contemplating the new income tax, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Wagner Act, all of which dramatically altered their costs and changed their business practices. In such circumstances, farsighted and nimble companies prosper and laggards decline. Such is the way of a dynamic economic system. Protecting the environment, moreover, is not a zero-sum game. Many forms of pollution reflect under-utilized or wasted resources.
Just as TQM helped companies identify untapped value, breakthrough thinking in the environmental realm may enable companies to reap real rewards. This sort of significant innovation offset is most likely to be found where regulations focus corporate attention on serious environmental problems that others face or will soon face. Quick-responding companies can obtain “first mover’s” advantages by selling their solutions or unexpected innovations to others at home or around the world. Porter identifies two kinds of “innovation offsets.” First, as companies face higher costs for polluting activities due to regulation, they will be pushed to consider new technologies and production approaches that might reduce the cost of compliance. Semiconductor makers, for instance, forced to abandon the use of ozone-layer-destroying CFCs as a solvent, have discovered several lower cost ways to clean computer chips. More dramatically, Porter suggests that while addressing environmental issues because of regulation, companies may develop entirely new products or processes.
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