Sustainability

Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia describes sustainability as:

The capacity to maintain a certain process or state indefinitely.

All inhabitants of the earth should be concerned with achieving a sustainable level of living. If it's not sustainable, you die. You should read the whole Wikipedia article and follow its reference and links.

Entrepreneurs need to know more specifically about the sustainability of their current level of business operations.

Answers.com defines economic sustainability as the "Noninflationary, stable growth in the economy with full employment: an objective of Federal Reserve Monetary Policy."

At the level of your enterprise, Answers.com sustainability is the

Income from a firm's operations in future accounting periods that can support debt repayment. It implies a rate of growth expected from retained earnings without external financing, and without altering financial leverage. Lenders usually ask for copies of financial statements before extending or renewing a Line of Credit.

Investopedia.com gives the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) as Return on Equity (ROE) x (1-dividend-payout ratio).

Morningstar.com gives a lot more on SGR. It says that there's a lot that SGR doesn't tell you. For example, "it won't tell you whether a company has the opportunity to grow. If the market for the goods isn't there, it doesn't matter how high a company's sustainable growth rate is--the compnay won't grow."

Whether you believe in formulas or want to crank them out or not, you need to think about what it will take to sustain your business and even make it thrive. If you don't think it will the way it's going, you need to figure out what will sustain it and make it thrive. If you can't come up with options, maybe you need to think about doing something else.

What's your notion of sustainability? Read all these things and google sustainability for more. And post a comment.

Entrepreneurship 2.0 is my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.