Hello everyone. Today's presentation is about innovation and sustainability. As you know, in our comprehensive framework of innovation as companies grow about developing products, services, new business models. And new brand experiences, we have to think of sustainability. How can we make this socially and environmentally and important innovation as well? And how does that fit within the overall internal context of the company? So today, we'll focus on how do you go about creating innovation through sustainability and we'll look at an example as well. So one of the things that drives this kind of thinking is the idea that we have only one planet on which we live. And this planet is one that has a limited amount of resources. We imagine we have an endless supply of water, of oil, of clean air but in a sense we are limited by the planet on which we live. And we have to take care of it if we want to allow this planet to be around to be a healthy planet for generations to come, and so how do we do that? We do that by thinking of new innovations, keeping in mind that we have to take care of the social and environmental issues that come up with any new innovation that goes out into the world. So let's start by looking at what this means. Now, we know that are several definitions of sustainability and of sustainable development, of sustainable growth. Here's one from John Elkington, and Elkington talks about this notion of the triple bottom line. What he says is the TBL, or the triple bottom line, consists of three things profit, people and planet. Those three things are important, think about and that transits into financial viability, social equity and environmentally responsibility. So according to Elkington, all new growth, all new development, all new innovations should take into account these three considerations. They often when companies think of bottom line they think of the economic or financial bottom line only. What Elkington's doing with his definition is introducing two important components, the social and the environmental. To make sure that we don't drive only cost, or price, or revenue, or earnings but we do that in the context of social and environmental issues as well. So the triple bottom line, or TBL, has these three components, environmental responsiblity, social equity, and economic viability. And these three things together create what he refers to as the triple bottom line, or the TBL. So keeping this in mind, keeping in mind the fact that sustainable development and sustainable growth has to happen with social and environmental issues along with economic issues. Let's look at a couple of definitions of sustainable innovation. So, Arthur Little defined sustainability driven innovation as this. It's essentially the creation of new market space, new products, new services or new processes but what are they different by? Social, environmental, or sustainability issues, again the same thing keeping in mind as we're doing new stuff, you think of the social and environmental issues. Here's another definition from Martin Charter. For him, it's a process, sustainable innovation is a process where sustainability concerns or considerations. Like social, environmental and financial are put together with and integrated with the overall systems of the company, right? And what does this overall company system include? Everything from initial research, from idea generation to R&D, to going to market, to commercializing products. The entire process should happen in such a way that these concerns, social, environmental and financial. Again, that goes back to TPL are integrated into the way the company thinks of its processes. All right so, and where does it apply? It applies to everything, it applies to products, applies to services, new technologies, new business models, new organizational cultures. This is another definition of sustainable innovation and you can see it's a pretty comprehensive definition. It's pretty broad, it's pretty big but we have to start thinking this systemic terms if we want our innovations to be socially good and environmentally benign as well. All right, so let's get a little deeper, how do you go about thinking of this? So here at Arizona State University, one of the things we do is we look at and we follow and we teach a specific model of innovation that we refer to as integrated innovation. And this model of innovation essentially is structured around four key questions, right? The question on top is, what is valuable to people? So if you're developing a new product, a new service, a new system, let's ask that question first, will this bring value to people's lives? Is this something that addresses a need? Do people want this? Will it make their lives better? That's the first question. The second question which is the second on the left is, is it possible to technology? Is it possible to engineering? Do we have the manufacturing, the technical, the feasibility of this figured out? Can we actually take this out make it a tangible product or service? Third thing, on the right, is what is desirable to the corporation, the business? Does it make financial sense? Will the company actually make a profit while doing this? Does it line up with the strategic vision of the company? That's the third question. Is it desirable to the company, desirable to business? And the last question, which brings in the powerful sustainability component is Is it good for society and the environment? So these four questions, what is valuable? What is possible? What is desirable? And what is good? Those four questions for us, create what we call the Integrated Innovation Model. And I think if we follow this model in every innovation, every new thing that we do, we can make sure that we create something that uses emerging technologies, that uses new technologies. We can make sure that it addresses people's needs. We can make sure that it also makes the company some money while it's doing this because that's important. And finally, it'll be good for society and the environment. However, when you look at this diagram you'll see that these four circles overlap in a very small area in the middle. And that is the sweet spot, that is where integrated innovation lies. That is the stuff we should try to go towards. And as this diagram expresses, the tensions sometimes work desirable to the business which pulls it one direction might not always work with what's possible technology. So this push and pull between these components is what makes integrated innovation difficult to do but also important to do. So this is one way of working towards a more sustainable way of thinking of our innovation practices. So what we'll do is we'll go through a quick project that was done here at Arizona State University with some students, we look at social problems. We look at social issues, we look at users and people who are often ignored by designers and engineers and marketing people. And that is, people who have specific kinds of disabilities. For example, in this case, we did a project and when you're looking at the issue of comfort. Imagine that you have either paraplegia or quadriplegia or some sort of a condition by which you are paralyzed from your neck down, right. If that happens, if you're in that sort of a situation, you will not be able to walk unaided and you need to use a wheelchair. So if somebody's sitting in a wheelchair for 24 hours a day or somebody's sitting in a wheelchair for most of the part of the day, and then they have to be transported into a bed. If they are sitting for all this time, what does comfort mean to them, and can we design something by which we increase comfort for the wheelchair users? So that was the overall problem that the students looked at. And you can see how being in a specific situation, not being able to move your legs around being confined to the chair can be difficult. In some cases, people might have a cane and they might be able to move on a little bit. In some case, they might be totally paralyzed and not be able to move at all. So there's a range of conditions that people face and how can we design something that makes this comfortable. Makes a wheelchair comfortable for people who'll sit in it for long period of time. So as part of integrated innovation model, we look at what is valuable to people? The way to do that is to look at their needs. So in this case what you see here is a diagram that we refer to as the hierarchy of needs. So the needs that are in the center, at the bottom which is user-friendly, storage, sanitary, user specific and safe. Those are, research discovered that those are the really important needs for people. They want to feel safe, they want to feel sanitary, they want some storage, they want the chair to be user-friendly. As you go a little bit further along, it's affordable, tech capable, smooth ride, replaceable parts etc., so these are a second level of needs, and a third level of needs above. So what we start doing is, really addressing the most important needs and then moving out wards to try and address as many needs as you can with this new sustainable innovation that we ae working on. So the two students working of this project came up with a new product called Novo which is called know pressure. And what they looked at and what they recognized was if someone is sitting in the wheelchair for 16-18 hours every day. They can get something called pressure sores and these are essentially because of the continuous weight, the lack of movement. The fact that your body weight is on your legs and they're in one position on the cushion. There's buildup of heat and pressure and that buildup of heat and pressure leads to what are known as pressure sores. They become wounds and they can be really damaging to the person's health. So what can we do? So the students designed this product called Novo, and what Novo does is it, number one, it's a cushion that actually changes pressure. So it has air bladders inside, and the pressure in those air bladders continuously changes so that there is no pressure built up in any one spot, right? So the pressure changes and therefore it reduce pressure from the legs and makes it less, makes it more difficult to create pressure source. It makes it a more comfortable sitting arrangement for the people in the wheel chair. Also, one of the complains that we heard from people in wheel chairs was that when you look at cars, when you look at chairs in offices, they're all really well designed. They look good, they seem ergonomic, they seem comfortable. But if you look at chairs in a wheelchair, they all look really industrial, they are essentially there's two planks, a vertical one and a horizontal one. Why can't we make that better experience as well. So this chair also has been designed keeping in mind that it has to be good looking, it has to be ergonomic, and it has to relieve the pressure sores of the people. The students also created a website but again, if you think of our model of innovation., there's product, process, service, etc. So they created a website for the product that explains the structure of the product, how it's made. What are some of the components? As you can see on the top left hand corner, it's an air bladder foam fusion seat which has sensors that measure time and pressure. So if you're sitting in one place for too long, it senses it and it changes the pressure. There's an app that goes hand in hand with it so you can actually look at the pressure in the chair. You can actually change the pressure yourself. The app also includes interactive elements like games and monitoring systems. And finally, they have in the bottom right, you can see it's a product platform that has several options that a user can choose. So this gives you a sense of the ecosystem of the product, it's not just the the cushion and the chair itself, but also is an app that goes hand-in-hand with it. And so some of the innovations that the students came up with was they looked at this notion of learning from nature, also referred to as biomimicry. Can we look at the way nature creates structure? And here in this case, you see a beehive made by honey bees. And they used hexagonal structure which can be really liked but really very strong and structurally very rigid. And the foam that is inside the cushion has not only some sense of memory, so it remembers certain positions. But also has a structure that is inspired by by the honeycomb thereby reducing the weight of the cushion. They also used a special kind of foam that's an ecofoam, that is made from natural materials and not some of the polymers. And then beyond that, be thinking of the product and the app. They thought of the entire community. How is this product managed? How is it manufactured? How is it disposed? How is it packaged? Where does the material come from? And if you think of this entire system, you think of the entire community, how does it affect the soil? How does it affect the land? How does it affect what's called the lithosphere and the biosphere? And how can we manage that so that we minimize impact on environment? While making it socially better as well? All these considerations take into account the fact that any new innovation should be a more sustainable form of innovation. So using this model, using this idea of integrate innovation by looking at people, engineering, corporation, and a social environmental issues. We can have a more balance approach to the way we do innovation today. So to quickly recap, what are the key things we need to think about when we do any sort of innovation is? You have to think of the life cycle of the product, you have to think of materials. What materials are used? How much energy is embodied into the product? How can you reduce waste? What is the manufacturing process? Can you reduce energy in the manufacturing process itself? How do you transport raw materials? How do you transport the finish goods? How far do they have to go? How much pollution is generated when the transportation happens? And end of life, what happens when you're done with the product, when you're done using your laptop or your smartphone? Or your blender, or it could be anything? What happens to it? Does it just get thrown into the landfill, or can it be recycled? So these are some of the key issues to think about when we think of environmental responsibility. And you think of a few products, can we first reject? Can we buy less? Can we reduce how much we buy? Can we reuse? Can we repair and can we recycle? As we think of these six components, these five components, you can try and create a more environmentally responsible form of innovation. But in also social issues how do you think of social equity. There's large divisions in our society between people who have access to wealth and goods and people who do not and how do you reduce that inequity in society? And some of it can happen through social innovation, right? How can you design new products and services that address these issues of social inequities. Lots of companies now have what they call CSR, or Corporate Social Responsibility. And these are codes that these companies write to make sure that the products that they manufacture are not created in poor conditions. That workers are well paid. That there's no sweatshop kind of conditions. Those are written into the responsibility codes. They look at labor practices, are people well taken care of? Do people care? Do the companies care for the workers who build these products? Is there employee empowerment? Do the employees have a means of doing better? Do the means of improving the conditions in which they are? Do they have a means of getting promoted? These things are taken into account as well. Do companies engage in charity programs? These are some of the key issues that are thought about from a social equity perspective. So what we've looked at today is we've looked at the idea of innovation through sustainability. And the way to do that is to think of, things like that integrated innovation, to think of the triple bottom line. These are frameworks by which we can move towards a more sustainable world by engaging in sustainable practices of innovation, thank you.
