How to Make Innovations more Sustainable

ABSTRACT:
The quest for more sustainable innovation has now become a priority for many organizations and their employees. For many millennials, the terms “sustainability” and “innovation” are virtually synonymous. After all, what is the point of innovation if it doesn’t lead to improved sustainability? Recognizing the importance of both concepts is fairly intuitive but merging them into a single cohesive innovation strategy can be much more challenging.

ARTICLE TEXT:
The quest for more sustainable innovation has now become a priority for many organizations and their employees. For many millennials, the terms “sustainability” and “innovation” are virtually synonymous. After all, what is the point of innovation if it doesn’t lead to improved sustainability? Recognizing the importance of both concepts is fairly intuitive but merging them into a single cohesive innovation strategy can be much more challenging. By approaching sustainability as an innovation strategy that can improve performance, the root causes of unsustainable behaviour can be identified and the most effective actions for defeating the root causes can be developed and implemented.

Unsustainable practices tend to fall into one or more of four general categories: wasteful practices, deficient processes and products, dysfunctional interactions, and negligent decisions. Four guiding principles for defeating the root causes of sustainability constraints and driving innovation. They include preventing waste, improving quality of processes and products, optimizing systems and restoring value to degraded assets.

I have sat through countless meetings with dozens of organizations where participants debate and pontificate the true meaning of sustainability and how resource constraints are increasingly creating risks and opportunities to competitiveness and prosperity. The meaning of the word alone can make your head spin and varies considerably depending on the values of individuals and organizations. Over 70 definitions have now been used in the literature but the one most commonly used is probably the UN version “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

The quest for more sustainable innovation has now become a priority for many organizations and their employees. For many millennials, the terms “sustainability” and “innovation” are virtually synonymous. After all, what is the point of innovation if it doesn’t lead to improved sustainability? Recognizing the importance of both concepts is fairly intuitive but merging them into a single cohesive strategy can be much more challenging.

For most organizations, sustainability strategy tends to focus on balancing and improving performance regarding three dimensions.

• Social Responsibility (People)
• Environmental Stewardship (Planet)
• Economic Growth (Profit)

Thinking of sustainability in terms of nouns such as these can provide the rationale behind “why” we strive to operate more sustainably. We want to be effective stewards of these assets, and focusing on their protection and improvement can help organizations identify their biggest risks and opportunities. However, these nouns provide little insight regarding “how-to” go about actually improving performance. Action is required to affect change and this can only be accomplished through work. To connect sustainability to the various roles and responsibilities of organizations, we need to use verbs and actions that describe “how-to” work more sustainably. So, what are the best verbs and action descriptions for explaining how to work more sustainably?

The Root Causes of Sustainability Constraints
At the end of the day, improving sustainability performance is really an extension of a quality-focused approach to business. However, instead of focusing only on quality of processes and products, we have to extend our thinking to include the quality of our communities and quality of the environment where we work and live. After all, these assets are important and well represented customers and suppliers to the enterprise and are crucial to its success. By approaching sustainability with a quality improvement mindset, opportunities and actions can be identified that can most effectively improve sustainability performance. Similar to other quality constraints, the root causes of unsustainable behaviour can be identified and the most effective actions for defeating the root causes can be developed and implemented. Unsustainable practices tend to fall into one or more of four general categories as described below.

1) Wasteful Practices
• Characteristics: Practices that result in inefficiency, hazards, accidents, attrition, defects, byproducts and excessive resource consumption
• Impacts: Injuries, diseases, damages, emissions, and wastes that lead to lost talent, depletion of resources, degradation of resources, pollution and escalating costs
2) Deficient Processes and Products
• Characteristics: Processes and products with defects that negatively affect quality, safety, productivity, efficiency and effectiveness of people, communities, businesses, resources and the environment
• Impacts: Wastefulness that leads to reduced quality, productivity and availability of community, environmental and businesses assets and reduced quality of life for people
3) Dysfunctional Interactions
• Characteristics: System aspects are not configured and managed in ways that maximize the benefits of exchanges between suppliers, designers, producers, customers, communities and the environment.
• Impacts: Deficiency and Wastefulness regarding methods, people, machines, materials, energy, surroundings and management
4) Negligent Decisions
• Characteristics: Choices that are unethical, irresponsible, and/or not compliant with regulations and policies; causing harm to people, organizations, communities and the environment
• Impacts: Compliance failure; lawsuits, workforce attrition, declines in reputation and license to operate; Damage to community, environmental and personal resources
Management choices that lead to these actions and outcomes contribute directly to sustainability constraints. Many businesses, and, in some cases, entire sectors (e.g. coal mining) are now facing constraints that jeopardize their future existence altogether.

While some organizations have been paralyzed by increasing constraints, others are thriving because they have been able to respond with measures that defeat the root causes of unsustainable practices. Many forward-thinking organizations have been able to create prosperous new opportunities by implementing more sustainable innovations in their processes, products and systems.

Sustainable Innovation
In recent years, innovation has intensified with respect to ideas, methods, materials, energy sources, machines and devices that address the problematic sustainability constraints at their root causes. The verbs and actions that describe these innovations commonly include a handful of key words such as prevent, improve, optimize and restore. These words form the core of four guiding principles for improving defeating the root causes of sustainability constraints.

These guiding principles can be used to develop practical approaches to sustainable innovation that are compatible across diverse roles, sectors and cultures. After all, what organization isn’t interested in preventing waste, improving quality, optimizing systems and restoring value?

By using these principles to guide innovation and strategy, organizations can defeat the root causes of sustainability constraints. Many companies, such as Valeo, Dassault, and Neste have used these principles to develop and implement more sustainable innovations and strategies to achieve competitive advantage. More sustainable innovation almost always leads to improved operational performance, better product performance, improved license to operate and expanded market share.