Einfach-Schnell-Klar » Sustainability

Learn from the Positive Deviants and Design Thinkers

Felix — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 20:13:56 +0000

“Best Practices” are often “Past Practices”. Moreover, they are also typically difficult to re-use due to the different context in which they have been created.

Thanks to David Gurteen’s newsletter I’ve come across the “Positive Deviance” method which is in use especially in development projects. This approach focusses on those people in a community who as individuals or as a group achieve a better outcome even if they face similar challenges and use the same resources. The book review by Kevin Bishop of Anecdote clearly shows the paradigm shift in consulting which the usage of this approach leads to: rely on local expertise.

The very strong article of the Stanford Social Innovation Review establishes the bridge between Positive Deviance and Design Thinking. Design Thinking addresses the needs of the people who will consume a service or a service. Design Thinking – and this is like closing the loop for me – is also taught by the Hasso-Plattner-Institute (HPI) in Potsdam. No wonder that the HPI will be part of the next Vision Summit in Berlin (April 2011). I’m looking forward to participating in this event.

What’s social business?

Felix — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 14:37:37 +0000

Muhammad Yunus describes in a clear way what’s NOT a “social business”:

if the investors desire a personal gain and take profit beyond the amount equavilent to investment, it’s not a social business.
if the business relies on charity money, on bi- or multilateral donors or on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities of companies, it’s not a social business (see also “Defeat Poverty” article).

The seven principles of a social business are:

Business objective will be to overcome poverty (BTW: interesting article on a new way to measure the poverty of countries), or one or more problems (such as education, health, technology access, and environment) which threaten people and society; not profit maximization
Financial and economic sustainability
Investors get back their investment amount only. No dividend is given beyond investment money
When investment amount is paid back, company profit stays with the company for expansion and improvement
Environmentally conscious
Workforce gets market wage with better working conditions
…do it with joy

So, any examples of successful social businesses?

Yunus offers an example in the video above (Shakti Doi yoghurt production). The article in the Times magazine outlines one aspect which Yunus sees as an huge advantage for the Profit-Maximising-Entrepreneur who would like to engage in social business: to start a social business is connected with a learning process:

… You realise that you are now wearing “social business glasses” on your eyes, you see things which you never saw before. You start sensing that your eyes were fitted with “profit-maximizing glasses” all along, while you thought these were your natural eyes in your economic world. Now when you turn your eyes to your own profit-making businesses you start noticing things which you never noticed before. You bring new-gained experiences from your new business to your old businesses. … (Muhammad Yunus on Social Business)

Fun Ideas for Sustainability

Felix — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 19:36:29 +0000

Tomorrow will be “Crazy Commute Day” in Vancouver. Steve Unger has initiated it. The event will be covered by the blog “Green Briefs“.

So, is it possible to change somebody’s behaviour with fun? Volkswagen Sweden launched the Fun Theory back in 2009. Here the Fun Theory award winner for 2009/2010:

However, the Fun Theory hasn’t found a broad adoption yet.

A fun way of communicating sustainability are animations:

Games are of course another interesting channel. The website “Games for Change” is dedicated to real world games with real word impact. One example of such a game is Free Rice:

Self-organisation may lead to high costs

Felix — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:25:03 +0000

Indian traffic relies heavily on self-organization. The cost of the lack of governance is high: e.g. more than 118,000 fatalities due to traffic accidents in 2008 (+40% in five years).

KM is too generic, let’s focus on KM for Sustainability

Felix — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:26:00 +0000

Eventually, I would like to combine two of my professional passions: “knowledge management” and “sustainability”. I studied environmental sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and worked six years for an environmental management consulting company, mostly on international cooperation projects focussing on sustainable development issues.

I decided to pursue my growing second passion and started as a knowledge management consultant back in 2000. I’ve been with my current employer for nearly three years working as the knowledge manager for the 600-employee business transformation consulting group of SAP consulting.

Visual Innovation

Felix — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:38:27 +0000

TED has again called my attention to an outstanding information design expert. Tom Wujec works on creative innovation (ok, do you know uncreative innovation?) and visual collaboration.
As a knowledge management consultant I perceive the visual framework for business effectiveness as a framework that doesn’t contain new elements. However, the methodology relies heavily on visualized communications and is presented in a very clear way. So, the “how to” part of it is really a “visual innovation”
The so-called “knowledge maps” are collections of sketches from presentations and events. This way of visualizing a presentation is of course different from usual meeting notes. Though, the methodology doesn’t scale. You have to rely on a skilled artist as Tom is to make full use of it. And you have to like his style of doing it.
As a citizen interested in sustainability I would of course love to see the “new previously unseen visualizations” of sustainability and the unveiling of the emerging technology of EcoViz tools.

Sustainability Sells

Felix — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:44:15 +0000

Yann Arthus-Bertrand introduces his wonderful movie Home at TED. ERP vendors won’t change the world alone. However, they play an important role in the socio-political game aiming at achieving a sustainable way of life. This change will not happen tomorrow. It took nearly 15 years between the sustainability discussion in academia – the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology where I studied was and is one of the leading institutions in the field – and the broad adoption by large companies. Hopefully we have reached a tipping point and the time has come to embrace sustainability.
I’m glad that my company SAP has embarked on this journey. The second Sustainability Report shows that SAP also works on the internal performance and expects a lot from business opportunities tied to sustainability. Another positive aspect of the new strategic direction on sustainability is the priority on “digital inclusion” and e.g. the collaboration with the microfinance organization PlanetFinance. Sustainability sells – in the software industry too.