Last week I had the good fortune of attending the State of Green Business Forum 2010 here in San Francisco. The event, which I also attend last year, is a great way to spend a day listening to colleagues at companies across the economy sharing their successes and challenges. Hearing about the journey of others working in the sustainability space is inspiring and reassuring, as so many of the issues that they are working/learning are the same ones we are trying to address.
There were a couple of key points that I wanted to consider a bit more from the event. First was this wonderful phrase from the Social Media/Transparency session - 'If you are going to be naked- be buff.' I love how this phrase properly captures the agency that is embodied within social media. If you don't want to engage on this dimensions, that is fine. But if you do, it must be honest and transparent, and when it comes to transparency it is a whole lot easier when you have good results to show off.
Secondly, I was very interested in the discussion about complexity and interoperability as it relates to Green IT. The ideal situation for the end user is that devices easily plug and play and our content moves ubiquitously across all relevant platforms/networks. It is tough with the massive complexity behind modern and future computing, there are so many devises talking to each other. This complexity can be the root of inefficiencies within the communication network. To overcome the complexity and its related inefficiencies, the network and all of its devices have to be behind a wall of interoperability, so that we "just go along with your life, only it is just more efficient".
Finally, I thought it would also be useful to share my notes as well, and they are condensed and presented below this post.
Notes
Keynote
- Something remarkable in 2009, green business accelerated through the deep recession. How? A focus on improving profitability (via growing top line or shrinking the bottom line). The SGBF report added green IT from last year, seeing a 'race to the top'.
- Areas of the Report clearly touch Avaya include: carbon transparency, telecommuting, energy efficiency, e-waste, fleet impact, green IT, GHG commitment, paper use, toxicity in manufacturing. Mandatory for greening business: competition, reputation, supply china and leadership.
CEO talk- Carl Bass, CEO and president of Autodesk
- Life cycle analysis: with materials there are choices and dramatic differences in resource use, takes research and deep knowledge to know those differences. Estimate of 300+ hours and 5-60k for a single product family
- Processing info: beyond normal channels (reading/web) it is useful to watch what partners and leaders are doing. Universities are also a great way to sniff out trends.
- Never seen an issue that has so captured his employee base as sustainability
- People have underestimated the impact of legislation driving corporate sustainability, for example building efficiency
Cleantech panel
- Part of the relationship with customers is explaining why they should consider/buy greener or sustainable products, example of TCO of electronics
- EE retrofits usually save more than they cost, but the pay back period can be between 5-10 years
- Vampire power: an example of a new term, you would have never heard this term 5 years ago
- Messaging: savings/TCO message reaching 'average' consumer much more readily, don't seem to be as much as a focus on the green washing issue
Radical transparency- using social media for corporate sustainability
- Info is ubiquitous, how do you make sense of it and manage it- 'if you are going to be naked- be buff'
- Radical changes has traditionally been driven by scandals, but now a move towards more disclosure
- Concept of a sandbox: as a corporation, we should strive to define our boundaries, should always strive to be transparent about being on a journey, not conceived of arriving at a destination
- Transparent: clearly define if you are company focused or single products focused- big difference. Best method is to start with a single core product and go from there.
- Multi-layers are necessary- for the 20k view and in the weeds.
- 'Sustainability is increasing short and long run profitability through respectful management'
Saul Griffith: this talk was quite engaging, I encourage folks to watch the youtube video embedded in the link
- Need heirloom products for everyone. Society has to actively and quickly move orders of magnitude more efficiency, not 50% better, 5x better
Green IT: can IT solve the world's problem?- best panel of the day for me, by far
- Moving to virtual collaboration is key strategic move
- Orgs should and are moving from once a year snapshot view (CSR Reporting) to a more responsive and flexible engagement (i.e. blogs)
- Sustainability has to drive both top and bottom line
- Shift from sustainability leaders being based within marketing focus to operations and products lines
- Collaboration: complexity of the problems means no one company can own the solution, therefore we as companies have to collaborate and compete. Collision of the physical and digital world makes for some interesting bedfellows.
Comments
Suggestion - what about hardware that is no longer being used by the customer i.e. old stock, that is just "shelved"...?
Posted 22 Feb 2010 at 06:39 AMAndy,
Great question, we just went live on the avaya.com site with more info about the best way to deal with this old stock, there are a number of different options depending on where you are located. There should be a solution for you in here, check out the End of Life Management section here: http://www.avaya.com/gcm/master-usa/en-us/topics/sustainability/information/productoperations.htm
Posted 27 Apr 2010 at 07:48 PM