The Stakeholder Capitalist Approach to Outcompeting Competitors

Image: Microsoft City of Tomorrow

​Corporate Challenge:  Leveraging your brand and products to help prevent a climate crisis.   
 
Ironbound Strategy:  One way to outcompeting competitors is to successfully convert unavoidable risks into opportunities.  Powerful brands focus on long-term sustainability by creating holistic value across employees, customers, and society.  
 
Ironbound Action:  Microsoft once the dominant leader in cloud-based computing solutions is now facing mounting competition.  These new and existing competitors threaten to derail a Microsoft driven future of Artificial Intelligence. To combat these competitors, Microsoft is adopting stakeholder strategies to entrench its technology into climate solutions.  In their 2020 Annual Report, Microsoft announced a $1 Billion commitment over the next four years towards innovative climate solutions.  In addition, they will be investing $50 Million in AI for Earth to accelerate using Artificial Intelligence to address sustainability challenges.  They will also help their suppliers and customers around the world reduce their carbon footprints using Microsoft technologies.  Finally, Microsoft intends to be carbon negative by 2030, and by 2050 remove all carbon it has ever emitted into the environment since its founding in 1975.