Executive Report: Innovating for Sustainability

This goes back to some of the tools we were spoke of early in the presentation, some of which look at single issues and the more recent design
tools taking an holistic approach.

Let me point you to table 2 in the report, Brezet and Hemel’s table of 8 sustainable design strategies covering things from concept development to optimising end of life systems. This is a great resource if you are taking a product or service oriented approach – and of course can be supplemented with the addition of tools for idea generation to liven up the process.

But, the design literature also talks about things called wicked problems, these are problems characterised by their lack of clarity – we scarcely can begin to define the problem let alone the solution. And I think that wicked problem might describe the challenges associated with being an organisational transformer or systems builder, and there are fewer established tools here to help.

There is very little evidence to suggest that the transition from operational optimisation to systems building is being achieved in, if you like, in a single bound – Desso is an exception. The big leap is in deciding what you want to be – say by using backcasting and, as in backcasting, uses a series of steps to get there. And, for the firms that are doing it, these steps are experiment – small scale experiments that can be rolled out if successful or ditched or modified if not. This is reminiscent of the concept of the ambidextrous organisation – one that is able concurrently to experiment with new models whilst continuing to exploit the existing model. Let me know if you want to explore organisational ambidexterity any further.

The mitigation hierarchy and biodiversity offsets are a little outside my area of expertise, but I’ll have a stab at this. As I understand it, the mitigation hierarchy moves through a number of stages from ‘Avoid’ through to ‘Compensate’ and in this model there is some read across to the model we propose. Our model moves in the opposite direction from the mitigation hierarchy, recognising that the majority of incumbent firms are starting from a position (by and large) of being
unsustainable and would look (depending on the extent to which they are
affected by any of the range of drivers) to move toward increasing
sustainability. The mitigation hierarchy is commonly applied to environmental
impact assessments in new projects and so has a different starting point –
where possible, avoid the impact. Nevertheless, the activities identified in
our model have much to inform the conversations that take place at the various
levels of the mitigation hierarchy.

Stephen, It is difficult for me to say too much about this particular
programme because I know neither Tim Hortons or the case well enough. I thought the Tim Hortons case was great and bore a lot of the hallmarks of the sort of activity one might expect to find amongst organisational transformers – which Carol’s “How we did it” slide neatly summarised.

Anyway, I congratulate Tim Hortons on what they have achieved, and I applaud any other firm that is attempting anything similar – these are not necessarily easy things to work through.

One of the themes I developed during the webinar was the embeddeness of firms within a wider system and that it may not be possible for individual firms on their own to be sustainable: sustainability may only be achievable when wider links and responsibilities are acknowledged. I would argue that the same is true for individual programmes within firms – they have to be connected to something wider. As an example of a firm working toward becoming
a net positive contributor I gave the example of IKEA planting more trees than
they use in production. However, if this is all they do, is that enough? The
point is, that a firm may be more sustainable in certain aspects of their
business than in others.
Richard