Sharing thoughts on innovation

From the core

When companies talk about sustainability, it still seems they approach this from the point of view of trade-offs, or at best looking for efficiency advantages (i.e., limit sustainability to more efficient resource use so lower costs).
While this is relevant, this does not inspire to the fullest and ignores the benefits and leverage that can be achieved by looking at the core, the essence of what the company does and linking that to -diverse- sustainability aspects.
It is not too bold a statement that ANY sector can do this. If only because the essence of companies is to provide customer value. Many sustainability aspects do just the same. It's about providing a better, more rewarding, more fun and why not smarter experience.
Think in terms of improving the customer experience and suddenly the whole paradigm of trade offs seems to vanish. You may need to search, you may need to be able to make creative links, but once entrepreneurs (i.e., the true value adding part of the business sector) stp getting positive energy out of that challenge they may as well just get in line for welfare.
Ignoring the opportunities that integrating sustainability in the core business is about the same as giving up, choosing the easy (but ultimately dead-end) road and showing that you are stuck in history.

Blog-o-power

Very interesting initiative that took place last week; The Blog Action Day on a common issue, this time Climate change: http://site.blogactionday.org/ (scroll down to 15 October)

By now it contains a list of 45 apparently most interesting tips as suggested by bloggers.

Sort of a large scale crowd sourcing experiment. Perhaps the next step is to purposefully sollicit such input for problems with the aim to actually integrate the best tips into concrete actions and policies? Open government, in a way...

On smaller scale similar mobilisation initiatives are initiated by Enviu (www.enviu.org) for specific projects, currently Open Source House (http://os-house.org).

Linking triple P's

In 2004, the authors Chan Kim and Mauborgne published their article on Blue Ocean strategies: presenting the notion that to beat the competition you can try to outperform them in given arena, or make them irrelevant by choosing a totally new arena where you can set the rules. This last strategy is caled xporing Blue Oceans (as opposed to continue fighting in the bloody red oceans).

It is an analogy that captures the imagination and that we have used several times as a framework in creativity sessions (Forget about the thinking about the box, Make box irrelevant whatsoever; works great). in the latest HBR (Septmber) the authors revisit the vision. Not with much news apparently, but they introduced a concept that immedidately caugh me for unintedend reasons.

Their theory why changes work is that three (3) Propositions need to be properly ailgned: Value (for your customer), Profit (for your revenues) and People (to make it work). Useful advice, in any situation. What caught me even more was the fact that when we talk about sustainable business development, thie Triple P-notion needs to be combind with the 'conventional' triple P notion (People, Planet, Profit).

Could it be a coincidence that the main theme of this HBR issue was exactly that: sustainable business development? We'll never know. But making these links is also what innovation is about...
Good luck using 3P in smart ways...