“Necessity, who is the mother of invention.”
–Plato, The Republic
Greek author & philosopher in Athens (427 BC - 347 BC)

About now, you might be questioning the validity of Plato’s quote. After all, as humans we have the tendency to go with what we are most familiar with until we are forced to move on. And history shows that accidents, incremental changes, as well as lucky errors are the sources of many inventions: fire, penicillin, genetic engineering, domesticated plants and animals are to name a few… Yet innovation is not driven by necessity, but rather by the acknowledgment of the invention’s value: value to society or to the inventor in terms of money, fame, or a sense of personal accomplishment. Who knows how many great inventions were lost over the years, simply because they were before their time, unappreciated… Given that, necessity is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for invention.

However, it is necessity that drives the need for change which triggers the invention process. Case in point, the 1973 oil crisis. It was this and the 1930s oil crisis that stimulated the research and development of renewable energy sources, and initiated the goal to utilize existing resources more efficiently while reducing and eliminating waste. In fact, it was 1977 and on when solar energy finally left the confinements of the research institutes, becoming a DIY (do-it-yourself) phenomenon. At the White House, Jimmy Carter was the first American president to take decisive steps to promote solar energy and formulate an energy policy. He became a role model by introducing a solar water heating system for the White House in 1979. However, this sense of urgency and initiative to become more self-sufficient using renewable energy sources came to a halt during Reagan administration. With the oil crisis no longer seen as a threat, Reagan removed the solar panels in 1986. (Sorry, Out of Gas by Caroline Maniaque, Pierre-Edouard Latouche and others)
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Apple has an announcement scheduled for this Tuesday. There is much speculation of innovations within the MacBook line, including potentially a low cost product line. As a Mac user, I am eagerly awaiting what is next. Whatever their announcement is, one can be sure it will continue to build on Apple’s core competencies.

Core competency originates from C. K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel in their 1990 paper “The Core Competence of the Corporation.” Prahalad and Hamel highlight core competency as a source of uniqueness that a company can do uniquely well, offering a competitive advantage as competitors can’t quickly copy. A core competency can take various forms: know how, process, manufacturing, relationship, development methodology, culture, talent management, branding, marketing, distribution, research & development, …
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“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains and sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.”
Steve Jobs

We all know a bad design when we see it. We not only remember them, but also share our experiences with others. But, it is the good designs that we admire and hopefully remember the most. Maybe it is the gorgeous look and simplicity of use of the iPod, or the one-hand-slide action of Motorola’s PEBL, or new and ingenious packaging like HP laptops, or some new online experience. The unforgettable designs are multi-dimensional. The best designs influence and enhance many aspects of our lives through interaction with those products/services — from our buying experience, to the delivery and packaging, to installation and use, to other products/services that complement it, to customer support and maintenance, all the way through end-of-life and disposal.

Design is the trendsetter. It is the translation of an idea to the final product. It has incorporated itself into every aspect of our lives, and became the ubiquitous element in our lives. “You can have any color you want as long as its black.” was Henry Ford’s manufacturing design revolution that triggered mass production. Today, design is yet again at center stage with the green revolution: good design is sustainable design. Good design delivers maximum impact to the customer with minimum impact on the resources of our planet. Good design contributes to the triple bottom line: economic, social and environmental.
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We live in a world of constant change, where firms need to focus on their operational bottom line more than ever. Yet, at the same time, our customers are not just judging us on our products, price and service, but also on our social and environmental impact. It is now all about our triple bottom line: financial, environmental and social performance.

Lets review innovation and sustainability definitions from previous posts.

• Innovation is about the implementation of a new idea for the purpose of creating value: value for the firm and value for the consumer.
• Sustainability is achieving outcomes that can be maintained indefinitely without depleting the support system or endangering present and future needs.

With that, it only makes sense to incorporate sustainability and sustainable business and management practices to our innovation process, and more importantly ensure it is the foundational principle of our innovation management activities. To refresh, innovation management is focused on managing and directing the firm’s resources and energy utilized for innovation to generate successful economic and competitive rewards.

As always, we have to tailor the concept of sustainability to our situation at hand. So, instead of taking a cookie cutter approach, this article highlights key areas to take into account as you are incorporating sustainability strategy into your innovation management activities. As each industry, technology, culture, target customer, and location have their own unique social and environmental challenge, customizing and developing your sustainability strategy will require planning and time.

In case you are questioning the need to incorporate sustainability strategy into your innovation management activities, let me repeat… Developing sustainable innovation management strategy is all about moving from traditional, resource intensive processes to methods that uses fewer resources while maximizing value. While it may not be obvious, studies have shown that sustainable development ultimately reduces development costs in the long haul, such as in the case of more optimized and environmentally friendly packaging.

Your innovation management activities are mainly founded on four key areas: culture, people/talent, technology/product and process. You can start identifying potential opportunities and sustainability issues in each of these areas by starting conversations and asking questions within your organization. As you are building your bigger picture, also use this opportunity to conduct your sustainability assessment, as it is important to understand where you currently stand in each of these areas.

• Culture — Sustainability is not just about managing the status quo more efficiently; it is also about building a culture that is mindful, compassionate about its impacts to society and the environment, and empowered to take action to improve. Global awareness of diverse cultural and ecological impacts, overall ownership and accountability, organizational learning, how well it can act is all part of building a culture that embraces sustainable choices.
• People/Talent — Globalization, resource shortages and demographic changes require your corporate sustainability agenda to incorporate your people policies. How you attract and retain talent, how your people internalize and act on your sustainability goals, how you enable your workforce to reduce its travel carbon footprint via telecommuting or video-conferencing programs, and how you sustain and nurture their creativity should all be incorporated into your sustainability strategy.
• Process — For a very generic term, process incorporates many different activities that take your innovation from idea to dissemination and beyond. For each of those activities, determine where you can make your process more sustainable and repeatable, without requiring significant resources. Ensure design and process innovation is part of your core competency, so that you are continuously looking for ways to build more sustainable products and technologies.
• Technology/Product — Evaluate every aspect of your technology and product life cycle to determine how you can incorporate sustainability strategies. In your analysis, make sure to include your value chain and your ecosystem evaluation.

In order to prioritize, start with a good understanding of what aspects of your products and services have an environmental or social component. Here are some starting discussion points:

• How/where can I reduce my environmental footprint?
• Product life cycle: Incorporate what-if scenarios to make aspects of your product more green. Redefine end-of-life concepts so there is less landfill impact. Utilize materials and processes that are more eco-friendly. And make sure to incorporate your evaluation of marketing communications.
• Customer support and service: Enable your customers to be greener: recycling programs, reduced packaging, sustainable upgrade programs. Make it easy for your customers to be green.
• Operations management: Analyze your manufacturing and transportation processes to reduce impact to natural resources. Innovate new process where applicable, such as ‘why doesn’t Amazon group my separate orders placed on the same day, and ship them all together?’
• Incorporate 4Rs across your organization, technology and products: refuse, reduce and reuse first, then as a last resort, recycle.
• Your ecosystem: Evaluate your value chain and see how your partners are handling sustainable processes, such as with recycled plastic or biodegradable materials, replacing ingredients or components with more environmentally friendly options.
• Procurement and suppliers: Evaluate your purchasing process for sustainability: recycling-friendly materials, processes and packaging. Ask for participation from employees and suppliers to incorporate sustainable practices.
• Product design: Design your products with sustainable goals in mind: reduce resource requirements, better manage all aspects of product application, dissemination and end-of-life from the time it gets to the hands of the customer to the time it ends up in the landfill. Do ‘what-if’ analysis to understand the environmental impact if demand increases. And, always simplifying your product to make it easy to be green.

As you build your sustainability strategy, you will identify new opportunities, risks and bottom line implications. Ultimately your success depends on your leadership, commitment, planning, creativity and innovations. Recognize this is a journey and track your progress using your benchmark: how well your company is performing against your sustainability requirements, and how your customers are reacting to it. Also create a sustainability knowledge center to track best practices, policies and learnings. Make your goals and progress public, and share it with your organization. This will ensure everyone is living up to the same standards. Employee engagement is crucial for any sustainability strategy.

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It is said that, once upon a time the forests in Central Anatolia were so thick that two passing armies would not hear each other. Today, mostly a desert, the City of Ankara’s main goals is to bring the trees, the greenness back into Ankara. So much so that, in the middle of an afternoon it is very common to see tanker trucks watering trees along the roadway, impacting traffic even though the city is in the middle of a drought…

You might have heard about the cotton farmers in India. The ones that are committing suicide as they can’t pull themselves out of the perpetual debt cycle created by the seed and pesticide industry. Recently, Asia was also in the news as they are experiencing a shortage of talent and lack of skilled staff in environments that expect high growth. As you might have guessed, this growth is coming as more layoffs are occurring in the US.

Our measures for economic prosperity are certainly broken. Today, we mainly measure economic growth in terms of consumers’ buying power. Yet, Adam Smith argued that the benefits of the free market should not be limited to individuals, but inclusive of the society as a whole: The Wealth of Nations (Bantam Classics). Unfortunately today, over-consumption is one of the biggest threats to our environment and society, as The Story of Stuff highlights so well.

In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission) established the following definition for sustainability: “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This implicitly captures that our decision making process has to be global, taking into account any present and future implications to our renewable and non-renewable resources, including our ecosystem.

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development points out that “sustainable development is good for business and business is good for sustainable development.” For me, this is common sense. Companies that think about and respect their environment, their society and their employees before they act tend to be well managed firms. Eventually, this also reflects in their financial performance. As popularity, transparency and awareness of green energy, fair trade, organic produce and socially responsible firms grows, your customers will expect sustainable business practices from your firm.

The truth is that concerns over sustainability are sprinkled across all aspects of our lives: our newly established exercise regiment, the weight-loss we recently achieved, striving for a certain living standard or wondering how much longer you can maintain your hectic work schedule, … At the same time, sustainability is about your values and the evaluation of your actions against those values.

For me, the concept of sustainability is very personal. It is as much about achieving well-being for myself and my family as it is about reducing or eliminating the overall stress and impact I have on my ecosystem. It is also about recognizing the cause-effect relationship of my every event and action, and realizing that each outcome has an impact to my sustainability goals which should be incorporated into my planning. With that, here is my definition of sustainability and what it means to live a sustainable life:

Achieving outcomes that can be maintained indefinitely without depleting the support system or endangering present and future needs.

Implicitly stated, ecosystem, society, self/individual and economy are intermingled and need to be carefully balanced to achieve my vision of sustainable living. At the same time, simplicity, self-renewal, incremental improvement and innovations are needed to maintain the process indefinitely.

Perhaps the most challenging part of sustainability is in its operationalization: what should be your sustainability goals, how do you know if you are on track, and what should be measured? As always, this will be based on your definition, your situation and your goals.

I urge you to reflect on your own definition of sustainability, what it means to you and if you are living true to your values. Yes, sustainability may seem like the latest fad, especially with the way firms are embracing it for their marketing. But, starting with sustainability and designing it into your life, your products and processes is a sound business practice. Whether it is idealistic and achievable or not, the road to achieving a sustainable future starts with you.

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