As emerging markets work to attain the middle class standard of living, it would take 5-6 planet Earths to support them (if they do it the way developed countries have done it).
…scary, huh? Even with recent reports that question the authenticity of global warming data from the mainstream scientific community, we know that the resources we depend on to do business and maintain our standard of living are becoming more scarce, and therefore, more expensive.
“An impeded stream is the one that sings” – Wendell Berry
Gil Friend’s webinar on innovation, the first session in the Sustainability Boot Camp series, was exciting and inspiring as he described the robust opportunities for product and process innovation by adding the constraint of “sustainability” to design. Design, he defined, is the process of innovating in the face of constraints, and adding sustainability as a constraint isn’t about being altruistic, it’s about accounting for the real costs of doing business (accounting for the cost of transportation, waste, supplier resources, etc.).
Traditionally, innovation has been about optimizing either one or two of the attributes of (1) speed, (2) cost and (3) quality of products, services and processes. Conventional thinking has always claimed that we make trade-offs among these three attributes and that it’s impossible to optimize all three at the same time; however, sustainability challenges us to do just that.
Friend also contends that “sustainability” really isn’t about “sustaining,” that maintaining current conditions is not a great goal. Instead, “sustainability” should be about “regenerating”– finding ways to create outputs from our business processes and lifestyles that creates inputs for other processes.
Among the many principles that Friend put forth, his assertion that innovation is about big goals was very compelling — claiming that big goals are not specific to the business, but are broader. He defined a way to get to big goals:
1. Get the price right (i.e., when we pay at the pump, we’re not paying for the real cost of acquiring gasoline)
2. Get off the stuff (we are addicted to material things – people want results, not the thing that gets them the results)
3. Get with your purpose
– What is your company here to do? (purpose)
– What do your customers really care about? (relevance)
– What value do you really provide them? (worth)
– How can your business do more with less? (efficiency)
– How good is “good enough”? (effectiveness)
– What big goals can you publicly commit to? (ambition)
4. Collaboration rules (get employees and team members to be inspired by big goals- capture attention, enthusiasm, and fire-up people’s creativity)