For those of you who may have missed the first installment, get caught up over here. With this being my second iteration on the Triple Bottom Line (3BL) business strategy, I intend to cover the issues surrounding the Triple Bottom Line strategy. The main point of contention from my perspective is that while this is certainly a feel good business approach, the reality may be that it is a very tough business model to implement.

Operating a true, Triple Bottom Line business requires a company to create weights or values to each of these 3 bottom lines of People, Profit, Planet. That is, financial officers and accountants must assign a value to the ‘People’ and ‘Planet’ lines just like the traditional financial bottom line of ‘Profit’. This obviously is a sticky point as a company must estimate how successful they truly are on the social and environmental side of the 3BL. While these efforts are very commendable, it is tough to attach a value to them. Also, the public and private companies depending on investors may have a hard time justifying the stated values to those potential investors. And would the investors agree with the valuation given to ‘People’ and ‘Planet’.

While I hope that this does not deter entrepreneurs or businesses from realizing a successful 3BL business strategy, it certainly gets these firms and individuals thinking about the great task of executing a Triple Bottom Line company. I also hope that businesses can think creatively about how to approach a Triple Bottom Line company. For example, can the ‘People’ and ‘Planet’ line items be positioned to be profitable in there own right? Something to seriously evaluate and researching in my opinion.

-Tyler Browning