Sustainability, social equality and the environment are the now business problems and corporates need to assume leadership roles in defining the new business models if they want to survive in the years to come. In most countries, business is the biggest force and without active involvement of business leadership, governments cannot change their policies or work on issues of sustainability, social equality and environment.Governments around the world struggle with long term issues. It is a reality of democratic governments that politicians run for elections every five years and therefore that's the time horizon that they work for. Economics is being taught as a fragment of discipline as if it is not related to society and people and markets can be misleading. The process of technological development is guided by signals from the market. Often theses signals are faulty and therefore the technology too are faulty and are driven by short-term financial incentives. For example the Detroit carmakers built concept cars that went 80 miles on a gallon but never brought them to the market.What we have today is a system that works as a powerful generator of poverty and social inequality. The future is alien to us. But we don't even see the current reality because it is all so unbelievable. For the first time in history, human beings are altering the biosphere.
At the same time, we are leading a wave of interdependence, like never before. It is then difficult to imagine that too many industries would not be affected by it. Companies in the transportation and energy sectors are leading leadership roles. In fact some of the big multinationals are moving towards making their business models sustainable for future. Companies like British Petroleum, Toyota, Xerox and Unilever are some of the companies, which are devoting significant resources in this direction.For example since 1992, Toyota devoted its energies in developing eco-friendly car-Prius. In 2000 the hybrid car could go up to 60 miles on gallon off petrol and remained a curiosity in American market. By October 2005, rising oil price resulted in sales of Prius increasing 68% when sales of iconic cars like Hummer and outer oil guzzling SUVs fell by half. Toady the Prius has taken Toyota to a leadership role in shaping the future of automobile industry. Toyota was voluntarily working on reducing carbon emission through lower usage of fossil fuels because that is where it believed the future lay.