Business with a mission: Introducing sustainability entrepreneurship

This article discusses the notion of sustainability entrepreneurship as distinct from current conceptions surrounding the confluence of entrepreneurship and sustainability, specifically sustainable entrepreneurship, ecological entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. It begins by defining the term and highlighting its distinguishing features. It then delves into the notion of sustainable development, a macro-level construct, showing how it relates logically to the firm, a meso-level one. This analysis makes it possible to see the salient differences between the various applications of entrepreneurship in the social and environmental arenas. Ultimately, three factors set sustainability entrepreneurship apart. The first is the sustainability mission as a founding principle; the second is the possible inclusion of societal resources in the mission, and the third is the means by which the mission is achieved, namely via sustainability levers and the positive relationship between revenue and impact they instil in the business model. The article concludes with a discussion of metrics, or the means by which sustainability entrepreneurs track the impact they have in the mission space.