How technology enables the Shared Economy

A great short speech by the founder of ZipCar (i.e. car sharing service) who is now working on BuzzCar (i.e. do your own carsharing).  Amazing how step by step the idea evolved from our anti-share attitude inching closer to real and increasingly effective results.

Speed and scale can be achieved when you combine excess capacity (of individuals, corporations or governments) with a common platform for participation.  This can grow faster than traditionally as it is collaboratively built infrastructure.

Also, she touches on the subject that our thinking has evolved from preferring centralised models to decentralised models and now to networks.  Here is a short video explaining this concept further... by the end of it you’ll think networks are the shizzle!

Social Technology for decision making

A few days ago I watched a documentary called us now, which was recommended to me on the Social Media course I am currently doing.  This film focusses on the potential of social media to make us a more collaborative species in regards to decision making. The examples in the film (e.g. couchsurfing, Ebbsfleet soccer picks, Zopa, slice the pie, etc) show that transformation of how we do things is now possible with speed and scale, and that it is now becoming possible to self-govern.
I love how people feel ownership when they can be a part of governance – I imagine that this will help us meet our needs better (syst cond 4)!  Imagine if what happened with the Ebbsfleet soccer team could happen in NZ rugby, I have definitely heard enough couch commentators to think this would be quite popular! Zopa (in NZ, maybe Nexx to come soon) shows us how to cut out the middle-man in banking, and with slice the pie the middle-man in music recording. The idea of giving out scholarships based on votes as opposed to one person deciding who and what is most worthy also resonates well with me, and hints that this is what could be done with public funds too (although need to find a way that this can't be corrupted). I imagine it could work well for shareholders, at least in cooperatives (e.g. the recently started Lyttleton store). Imagine - community consciousness can now be measured and used!  
I found it interesting there is a quote in there ‘those people who are best at adjusting from management to leader are those that are comfortable with the idea of letting go’… I will take that on board – because I am sure I want to be that kind of leader!

Systems Thinking for New Zealand

For my first assignment I decided to focus on New Zealand to demonstrate my understanding of the things we learned in our first courses.  For this I made my first Prezi, and a report.

When like minds come together to discuss resilience in Auckland

Last night I attended the Hikurangi Foundation’s first Open Space Forum ‘New Zealand & the Next Industrial Age’ with Rowan Douglas (Willis Research Network) who gave a rough overview of his impression of New Zealand and the Insurance Industries take on how we have managed the Christchurch earthquake and what this new age of extremes will be like to operate in.  By extremes he means the ever increasing rate of natural disasters, economic instability, new technology, etc.

He pointed out that our Institutions were set up with the aim of achieving ‘efficiency’ but that the time has now come where we need ‘resilience’ (a.k.a. sustainability).  According to him, the Insurance Industry is in a state of rediscovery and has the challenge of learning about and deciding how to manage extremes, e.g. do we acquire the funds to assist societies after extreme turmoil using local or international schemes, and do they come from public or private sources?

Apparently, the Industry bases most of its operational guidelines (e.g. how much money to have on standby) on scientific data (good to hear!) acquired through computer modeling.  He didn’t spend too much time on this point, but went on to say that the Industry is currently in restructuring mode and outlined all of the reasons why New Zealand could be a model for the rest of the world in more ways than one. 

The Open Space Forum created 6 topics of conversation and after we had 30 minutes to chat amongst ourselves the groups shared a short summary.  The topics were:

·         Building resilient (proactive) communities: Main points were that we have to get more community engagement.  NZers lack knowledge of their local assets and attributes, which is a scary thought.  They also lack a conscience of how bad overseas conditions are and we also lack it on regional matters because we read the low-quality national news more than local newspapers.  

·         The use of legislation for resilience:  Some have realized that economic growth is not the same as wellbeing, but the conscious paradigm shift needs to occur both for public and private sectors.

·         The role data could play in communities and the ethics about its openness and source: organizations become sustainable and resilient only slowly, so they need to be able to measure that they are heading in the right direction along the way.  Seeing how data responds and organizes is very powerful and communities should have this ability (e.g. Whistler does it!).  At the moment government and business uses this tactic, and all the data that’s collected is framed for their use only.  Data and models are only useful when they are applicable.  Also, do we use their outputs to inform us or blindly?  Quite quietly, one woman spoke and not many picked up this gem: she said, ‘there is value in collecting data on peoples values to inform us’ and it just made me think back to the my favourite concept of ‘we should be voting on issues, not a popularity contest’ and the idea that probably founded our current political system i.e. we do not need to vote on issues if we know peoples values.  I bet there hasn’t been a hell of a lot of research (good and recent research I mean) into what NZers values are.  NZers are quite a diverse bunch you know?!  I must look into this.

·         Effective public-private-partnerships:  We often have public sector trying to do the private sector thing and failing but the private sector probably has to have its paradigm shift first i.e. what’s the purpose of business (hint: not just to make money like a greedy bugger anymore! Come up with something better!)

·         The national security of New Zealand and its clean green brand: this is the one I went to, and met a bunch of really interesting people. The main points that really resonated with me were: NZ’s long skinny shape needs to be considered for security and resilience reasons.  What industries do we need to be self-sufficient and resilient?  Would we be better off investing in new spread out infrastructure than upgrading our old one?  It’s vital that our current top-down heavy approach is matched with bottom-up approaches.  A collective fund (such as the EQ levy) would be helpful to finance after extreme events.  The one question we didn’t get to but I wanted to discuss was: What needs to happen to speed up adoption of good ideas?

What I took from the evening was the following:

·         Great conversations can happen when you put people who are interested in the same things in a room and let them choose which topics to discuss and contribute to.

·         A first glimpse into the perspective that the Insurance Industry has in regards to the future and its place in it.

·         Industries are all gagging to have indicators or tools to measure progress.  I am quite sure that we can still do better to develop an applicable measuring tool for how sustainable something is yet, and I’m keener than ever to dedicate some time into the subject.

Reflections after the second Block Course

I have just returned home after spending 3 days in Raglan for the second sustainable practice block course.  I really enjoyed staying at Solscape - its fantastic views over the harbour (with gorgeous colours at sunrise and sunset) and voluptuous greenery made me feel as relaxed as if I were on holiday.  The learning was good fun and the people made it even better.  The first day and a half was spent on the community/business paper we are embarking on, and the latter half was used to teach us more about the power of social media... so in the next set of posts will likely feature these two topics predominantly.  However, I've noticed its turned into an info-dump at times, so I'll start popping in a few more purely reflective posts (like this one) to get more out of it.

What are the predominant thoughts I'm coming away with from this block course?  I'm definitely feeling more confident!  Steve's 'anything-is-fantastic, the-more-spontaneous-the-better and learn-your-own-way' thinking pattern is rubbing off on me more an more and I feel all the better all the time.  I can feel my true creativity coming back too, which I realise now is one of my strongest assets.  I've identified my 3 month goal (the length of these next papers) is to pretty much finish up all my assignment requirements, but they are the minor detail in the intention I'm putting forward to just practice applying all the things I have learned (whether they fit into the modules or not).  A reoccurring theme that has come up when I've dedicated time to thinking about what I want, and that is to have my fingers in a lot of pies.  Any time in my life - if there were literally(!) many flavours of pies in front of me - all I wanted was to have a taste of each.  I can confidently confess that I am a generalist who loves the big picture overview and its variety! So, what I'm going to do - apart from my assignments - is aim to help out all the other people in my class (and honorary members beyond) in lots of little ways.  A usual classroom wouldn't reward that, and that's probably why it took me so long to figure out.

Little extra comment:  On Sunday morning, whilst I was out at golf, I received a txt from mum to call her, and she told me that her dad passed away over night (daytime 5/5/12 in germany).  Fortunately, he had had a nice day with her sister (lunch and a visit to Oma's grave), and went to sleep just 5 minutes after returning to his room.  I was a little surprised at the news, but mum was so good about it that I didn't feel horrible.  We knew he wanted to go.  Oma passed away just under a year ago after battling cancer, and they had been together for over 60 years!  Later in the day I spent some time processing it, and the cliche feelings of appreciating time on this earth came on.  Mark and I went out for dinner to toast Opa and got talking about our future options.  Afterwards, when we were home, I showed him a really interesting video I thought would be quite fitting for him to see (sustainability focussed of course haha!) - and the experience was amazing... I had always shown him this-or-that video, but in this one the message was so that things really clicked into place for him.  We are on the same page now more so than ever before.  Thank you Opa for kicking it off! Prost!

Tools for Measuring Success

For every organisation that wants to measure its progress on the journey to sustainability, there need to be tools that are appropriate for their situation. Fortunately, many have already been developed (even though strong sustainability hasn't always been their goal). One of the most official that large corporations are already familiar with is the ISO 14001 standard. Here is a research article reviewing it from the point of view of the Natural Step framework.  The main conclusion is "tools such as ISO 14001, while a useful start, do not in themselves assist an organization in strategic planning, with true sustainability in mind".  As Karl-Henrick mentions in the presentation a few blogs down, all of these have a place and are useful, but currently only the 5-level framework is capable of looking at the whole picture to stimulate thinking towards transformational change.

Other tools are:

• Envirostep (an entry level online assessment tool to help SMEs understand, improve and communicate environmental performance)
• Tourism Oil Price Tool (an online assessment tool for New Zealand tourism businesses to assess relative exposure to profitability risks associated with higher world oil prices)
• The Global Reporting Initiative have an indicator search.
• ANEW New Zealand Integrated Structure of Indicators - this site has a variety of national and international case studies on indicators. Their research project aims to assist Councils to develop their community outcomes and performance indicators and to assist in moving toward an integrated structure of indicators across all Councils

Sustainable Housing in NZ

Who knew that there were so many cool things happening in NZ in regards to sustainable shelter!  This Solar Action Innovative Housing issue (2010) has a whole lot of information, including a the results of the Sustainable Habitat Challenge which was launched to stimulate new building design ideas; this Building a Better Way: Summary for Designers document they produced afterwards gives a detailed overview of some inspirations.  Such a clever idea to use a national competition to gather research data (see page 12 of the newsletter)!  So efficient its genius!
Also, for anyone who is interested in Villa renovations, see this Retrofit and Renovation resource.

Better by Design

A cool talk by Adam Lowry who spoke on Creating Positive Change Through Design Integration in Business at the Better By Design CEO Summit in NZ (2010).

After he was fed up with the common notion of having to buy inferior products to 'be good to the planet' he started a cleaning products range which has been quite successful and forced their competitors to think differently, thereby creating massive change (bigger than just their business).



Can't argue with success... and it seems that CEO's have really cottoned on to the importance of sustainability, it was listed as one of the 5 big shifts in this space by James Goodman and Martin Wright when they produced this article Five shifts in Sustainability that will make waves in 2011.  Oh, we are in 2012 now right?! So here's my quick observational response to how spot-on these projections were:1. Nowhere to hide as the open society arrives (absolutely, as long as the internet is alive we are all going to be more an more informed than before and this will lead to bottom-up rising-up all over the place).2. Africa, from basket case to boom time (yep, the biggest untapped market is being tapped.  Whether it be negatives like land-grabs or positives like start-up support - numerous examples in Richard Branson's book Screw Business as Usual; he's even set up a centre for entrepreneurship there - Africa is the place to consider).3. Biodiversity, its a business issue (I'm not sure how much this factored in, I have a feeling its something that is being discussed in a lot of boardrooms but I haven't seen many headlines or commitments to support other species yet... but I sooo want to!)4. The return of climate change, will science strike back (yes, I'd agree that there is less of a climate-denier presence than there was in 2010, based on my NZ perspective at least)5. CEO's have finally cottoned on, what now? (again, there might be plenty of boardroom discussions but we need more action, now!  Overall though as the stats in the article indicate, more and more people are getting it, we are closer to actions than we have been before.)

Whistler Canada case study

Here is a video of interviews with Whistler's municipal decision makers about the decision making process they used to evaluate a new infrastructure investment using the Natural Step Framework.



I have yet to finish reading the Whistler 2020 plan and Key Lessons, as soon as I do I'll update this post with more info.
The Whistler 2020 Performance monitoring programme tracks and reports their status and progress toward the Whistler 2020 Vision through Core Indicators and Strategy Indicators. You can track Whistler's progress towards or away from each Whistler 2020 Priority, Strategy and Sustainability Objectives. The monitoring programme tracks progress, informs decision making, and ensures accountability while educating and engaging community members and stakeholders. Progress is reported at least annually for most indicators.  Pretty cool huh?

Applying ABCD

Strategic Planning for Implementing

For the Implementing Sustainable Practice paper I am taking, we were given a resource called Strategic Planning with Appreciative Inquiry: Unleashing the Positive Potential to SOAR.  It was prepared by Innovation Partners International to describe an appreciative strategic planning technique SOAR (strengths, opportunities, aspirations and results) as an alternative to the traditional strategic planning technique SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats).

SOAR is based on a "5-D process", referring to:

1. Definition (decide who to invite and how)

2. Discovery (inquiry into Strengths and Opportunities)

3. Dream (identify Aspirations and Results) 

4. Design (decide which opportunities have the most potential)

5. Destiny (delivery; implement and measure success)

More details on each step are in the linked document, when you read it you see that this is very similar to the Natural Step 5 level framework (but tailored to include the fine strategic detail for getting things done).
It's definitely something worth referring to for managing projects.

TNS Sustainability Primer

A good accompanying document to the previous post is the Natural Step Sustainability Primer.  It is a simple to read explanation of the thinking behind the framework and its tools.  After learning all the bits in relative isolation through the many presentations I have taken notes on, it is a nice overview demonstrating how they all fit together.

For the actual task of transforming organisations there is the Planning for Sustainability: A Starter Guide (this one is adapted to NZ specifically) which I will use when I work on my assignment(s) coming up.  It's a fantastic resource that anyone in NZ could use to do this work.

The Natural Step explained in 48 minutes

Karl-Henrick Robert is one of the founders of the Natural Step Framework; although, as he makes clear in the first minutes of the video, it is a continually evolving framework that many people are contributing to continually.

I completely agreed with one of his early comments, i.e. "What the world needs more than anything today, are proactive role models showing the way", because I believe we are all simply creatures of habit and doing new things is a very scary thing that can only be made less-scary by seeing someone else do it first.  Also, as I learned from Sam Harris's talk on free will, it seems that with all of our different thinking patterns that have arisen due to our unique backgrounds, the process of learning and realisation (and consequently our actions) is different for all of us, so the simplest thing to do to get everyone on the same page is to continually expose others and demonstrate to them the preferred ways (then, at different times, gradually, as it seems rational to them to do the same, the new way may catch on and new habits will form).

Karl-Henrick explains that he sought for a system that could define sustainability in principles based on universal values, so it could be used in the huge multitude of different circumstances that we need to transform, and better still, as a tool for creating a common language so that different groups can talk to one another and cooperate for progress.  Considering I love this topic, I'm eternally grateful that he and others have dedicated their time to make it easier for newbies like me.  He gives a good overview of the Natural Step Framework that I am trying to learn.  I found him a really compelling speaker...with a european-speaking-english charm... enjoy.

The ABCD Planning Process

Creating Shared Value

There are many leaders in the business community that have recognised the importance of adapting in response to the drivers of change.  Richard Branson describes some examples of transformational change he has so far initiated and observed in his book Screw Business as Usual, which I am halfway through at the moment.  His motto goes 'doing good is good for business', which is the same theme I came across in this Harvard Business Review article Creating Shared Value.  It's quite long, so here's the main points:

The authors are concerned about the fact that the current state of the economy is resulting in a lot of mistrust in business (which they blame on an outdated approach to value creation) and they call on companies to take the lead to bring business and society back together.  "A business needs a successful community, not only to create demand for its products but also to provide critical public assets and a supportive environment.  A community needs successful businesses to provide jobs and wealth creation opportunities for its citizens" and "Businesses acting as businesses, not as charitable donors, are the most powerful force for addressing the pressing issues we face".

"The purpose of the corporation must be redefined as creating shared value, not just profit per se.  This will drive the next wave of innovation and productivity growth in the global economy.  It will also reshape capitalism and its relationship to society.  Perhaps, most important of all, learning how to create shared value is our best chance to legitimize business again."  

They define shared value as "policies and operating practices that enhance the competitiveness of a company whilst simultaneously advancing the economic and social conditions in the communities in which it operates", a concept which blurs the line between for-profit and non-profit organisations, and is essentially a complicated way of explaining what makes social entrepreneurs get out of bed in the morning.  Essentially its a more meaningful revamp of the originally hollow 'corporate social responsibility'.  They claim that putting societal issues at its core will lead to the ability to tap into "overlooked opportunities to meet fundamental societal needs" since it is now obvious that "societal harms and weaknesses affect value chains".

"Companies can create economic value by creating societal value" via three distinct ways: by reconceiving products and markets (products that are good for customers as well as societies major needs are an untapped market), redefining productivity in the value chain (many externalities actually inflict internal costs), and building supportive industry clusters at the company's locations.

They identified the root cause of our issues to be "the traditional divide between economic concerns and social ones, people in the public and private sectors have often followed very different educational and career paths" and the authors recommend more holistic thinking and training in both camps so that this model can work.  "Business and society have been pitted against each other for too long ... economists have legitimized the idea that to provide societal benefits, companies must temper their economic success and ... solving social problems has been ceded to governments and NGOs."  

On governments and NGOs, the authors suggest a shift in thinking to view success more as 'results achieved' as opposed to 'funds and effort expended', and for the design of regulations to focus on enhancing shared value also; regulations that have features like: clear and measurable social goals, performance standards (without prescribing how to achieve these, yet with phase-in periods) and universal ways to measure and report on them, the provision of benchmarking data.  "Survival of the fittest would still prevail, but market competition would benefit society in ways we have lost".

Education Revolution

I watched Sir Ken Robinson's talks sometime last year, but I have not yet read his book The Element.  Looking back on my own education, I bet I would have thrived in a much more balanced way if his thinking formed the basis of the system.  I sure hope for the sake of all the bored but well intentioned kids everywhere that his beliefs break through to mainstream soon!

Here's the concept:

and here he is in detail:

A lot of people talk about the potential to integrate knowledge on how to be sustainable into students learning.  It's again something that we used to do but was lost due to the reasons in the first video above.  Since this is a blog about education and sustainability I wanted to mention another resource given to us in this course which is a guide prepared by the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) to inspire actions for the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-14) by illustrating innovation and practice in education with case studies, examples and interviews; its called Engaging People in Sustainability (I'll find the link sometime and add it in).  I didn't even know we are in this UN decade, but it doesn't surprise me, it sounds like something they'd do.  It was cool to see NZ mentioned for the Enviroschools initiative.  I was the first chairperson when it started up at my school St Peters in Cambridge :-)

Learning Organisations and Transformational Change

Implementing - Introduction to the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development

The Power of Crowdsourcing

The reason I get excited about open platforms for idea generation and action is because the results almost always supersede expectations.  Here's an example:

When Richard Branson wrote his book Screw Business as Usual, he also created a competition for people to submit videos on their ideas, I had a look at a few and there's some real gems in there!

Neighborland

Something I keep coming across is the need for communities to set their own priorities and create their shared living space.  It's how things used to be before we all became so independent and successful - competitive instead of cooperative!  So I was quite excited when I came across an idea called Neighborland, found here, and I summarise it as 'Facebook for communities' so they can talk to each other and cooperate again to create well functioning and unique places that people will want to live in. I like the idea of restricting access to just those people who are living in the community, but having it open within this circle so anyone can contribute.  I imagine it could be a platform for communicating with local government too, on the same aims as shaping our future.