{"id":528001,"date":"2010-04-14T12:02:24","date_gmt":"2010-04-14T16:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/innovation\/?p=1708"},"modified":"2010-04-14T12:02:24","modified_gmt":"2010-04-14T16:02:24","slug":"use-night-vision-goggles-to-uncover-innovations-through-sustainability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/528001","title":{"rendered":"Use Night-Vision Goggles to Uncover Innovations through Sustainability"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This morning, I spoke on a panel called \u201cDriving Innovation Through Sustainability\u201d at the Fortune Brainstorm Green conference<\/a>. Given that the panel was held at the eye-popping hour of 8 AM, it\u2019s testament to the topic that the room was overflowing. Or perhaps the draw was my fellow panelists \u2013 Matt Kistler, Senior Vice President of Sustainability for Walmart, Rick Rommel, Senior Vice President for Emerging Business at Best Buy and Scott Elrod, Vice President of the Hardware Systems Laboratory at the Palo Alto Research Center \u2013 and our moderator, Roger Ballentine, President of Green Strategies.<\/p>\n

Roger started us off by saying that a sustainability agenda can act like a pair of night-vision goggles, helping corporate managers and executives find innovation where they couldn\u2019t see it before.<\/strong> That certainly resonated with me \u2013 I\u2019ve seen that pattern over and over again in the companies with which we work. In fact, I\u2019m often asked of our partners, \u201cWhy did they need you to find an innovation that\u2019s clearly good for their business?\u201d I think it\u2019s because in many ways Environmental Defense Fund provides those night-vision goggles Roger was talking about, bringing a new green lens to business as usual.<\/p>\n

The analogy seems to work, especially when it comes to finding efficiencies within a company\u2019s operations and even for greening a supply chain<\/a>. Matt had some great examples about how that works with moving innovations \u201cup the value chain\u201d to Walmart suppliers and, increasingly, \u201cdown to consumers.\u201d Rick added a great point about how moving innovation does not go in a straight line but rather a loop, especially when you start to bring in innovations in product take-backs.<\/p>\n

Things got even more interesting when we got to talking about how to move innovations horizontally across industry sectors. Scott postulated that innovations can move even when the intellectual property is owned by one company if that company has the incentive to build market share. The kinds of barriers we see to quick adoption are generally not about intellectual property but rather basic market failures: How can companies become more aware of the innovations applicable to them? How often do companies pass up beneficial innovations simply because someone else thought of them first?<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most interesting conversation came toward the end of the session when we explored what it takes to create a culture of innovation within a company. Can we, Rick asked, import some of the characteristics of the venture capital community \u2013 quick failures, competitive capital \u2013 into a corporate bureaucracy? Or is it more important to understand the cultural values that already exist in your company and link the sustainability agenda to the drivers you already have in place?<\/p>\n

What would it take to bring night-vision goggles to your company?<\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning, I spoke on a panel called \u201cDriving Innovation Through Sustainability\u201d at the Fortune Brainstorm Green conference. Given that the panel was held at the eye-popping hour of 8 AM, it\u2019s testament to the topic that the room was overflowing. Or perhaps the draw was my fellow panelists \u2013 Matt Kistler, Senior Vice President […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4273,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-528001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4273"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528001\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}