The ecosystem and the economic subsystem are interlinked. In fact, it is the overconsumption of scarce resources or the overproduction of bad outputs at economic system level that causes a great part of the imbalances at the ecosystem level. Some imbalances do not originate at the economic system level, but are due to external factors. Given the possibility of external shocks, respecting static sustainability thresholds is not a guarantee for system sustainability. In a dynamic setting, the concept of resilience is therefore helpful. In this paper we show how this concept can complement the traditional efficiency approach to come to a sustainable value creating economic system.