Tools for a Sustainable Economy

"obsession with imagined experiences of loss" - a community common project.

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 21:42:22 +0000

A doctor and a lawyer walking into a bar one day to shed off some worries from this roller-coaster economy; one says to the other: you know, in this economy, I don’t have to just wait for malpractice to earn my keep, what if we worked together and we solve a social problem?

meet:meshcoalition.org

Chad Priest is a RN, MSN, JD.

Dr. Charles Miramonti is a chief medical officer.

Hmmm. I wonder if these guys are prior military? I knew for sure Chad was in the Air Force. I had visited their operation. Everything is run like a unit and it was extremely efficient and familiar. They have combined the holistic operational thinking behind a mobile command unit with a keen focus on emergency medicine – one that I know very well from another life time.

They are running an Aid Station for the city without the daily sick-calls.

Chad had asked me about my mobile app idea, but at the time I did not know how to answer. I didn't want to tell them what I was doing because I would go on forever in technical jargon that would bore a clown to death. I also knew intuitively there is a connection between their operation and what I am doing. But I didn’t know how to articulate the fit between the mobile application and their operation. So I kept my mouth shut.

Now I know, and I like to tell for the benefit of the community.

mootee.typepad.com
What they need is a mobile communication and feedback mechanism, fashioned in a fractal pattern, to tie a community together with mobile ready data and notification management system. This could also be easily applied to a holistic medical information system centered on Sustainability. This is sort of a Constituent Resource Management system for emergency situations, and a knowledge-base for community health as an ecosystem. We may even learn a few things about our health care in general and save a few dollars for tax payers.

Of course this communication and information management system has to be simple for the end users. It will need to be tested over and over within real time trials to sort out all of the human bottle-necks. But this testing will generate data that we would desire to have in terms of social knowledge about our public health. An applied Six Sigma process will serve to that purpose, giving a step by step instructions to identify any potential gaps and problems within the current process, analyze and define some possible mobile solutions, design, develop, improve, and then control the information environment to maximize control over emergencies.

I deeply believe emergency medical information management is essential to the concept of Sustainability. I do admit my experiences make me a partial Opinionist. But I believe nature invariably changes, and we have to adopt. Adopt and then overcome. This is what New Orleans has done.

We could not have a sustainable society without acknowledging that we are not masters of nature, but just as insects – subject to Earth’s wrath. Developing and advancing our emergency management means developing an understanding to the long-term sustainability of our cities and society.

In the words of the MESH Coalition,

This requires a focus on sustainment of the healthcare infrastructure during an emergency event and through the recovery phase.

To be truly dialed in on Sustainability, this has to be about emergency medical management that will address issues such as our food crisis and the rising costs of our health care. This is Civil Emergency Management, well, Civil Information Engineering of sort. A mobile app and a web portal will serve as data capture and knowledge building tool. This could benefit our community in so many ways.

sorry, i tend to drool on ideas... I wonder if they are open to the idea?

"Attention Wal-Mart shoppers!"

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 22:30:34 +0000

June 4, 2084. It’s an ordinarily hot summer day in Beijing – 58 degree Celsius.

art by Kristen, Mediatinker

The streets are crowded with the usual: electric cars, peddle-powered motorbikes, and pedestrians desperately fighting the chaos. The tourist groups from Mali had gathered at the bridges of Tiananmen Square earlier to take 3D perspectives. They are now scattered throughout the crowds buying novelty kites and candy-covered fruits from the locals, anxiously awaiting for their tour bus to fight its way through the city traffic. At lunch, they had been served with a packaged meal, “Inspected by the Chinese Food Security and Safety Bureau,” with the approval for distribution from Wal-Mart - the official" non-governmental processing and distribution company in China. Their lunch had consisted of soy-flavored organic chicken breast, individually packaged bearing the Wal-Mart brand, and Wal-Mart certified hydroponically grown rice and vegetables, tucked away in a “Solar-Mate” box design to heat the meal from the natural micro-radiations received from the sun.

Suddenly, one of the visitors fell over in the midst of the crowd. Immediately, a circle of space gave its way around him. He had been throwing-up near the trashcan, it appears he had made a few steps away and fell unconscious.

CCTV news reported that night as just another tragedy associated with the recent outbreaks of a food epidemics throughout the CAFOs that supplies Wal-Mart’s healthier and greener brand. All of this is because of concentrated operation and elimination of biodiversity. . .

“Attention Wal-Mart shoppers!”

In five years, you can expect to eat healthier according to the Wal-Mart standards.

Photo from
Wal-Mart Boosts Energy Efficiency of Chinese Suppliers

Our brain picks up the scent of good news by a range of identifiers. Things like “eating healthier” and “Ms. Obama” usually signal, at least to me, something good and positive in the media that is inundated with junk or downers these days. When I saw the New York Time’s article, “Wal-Mart Shifts Strategy To Promote Health Food,” I was excited. I had read some facebook comments about the article, and that is how I ended up here, writing about it as sort of a social urge to give back to the conversation.

The facts are simple enough. Wal-Mart had been contemplating the idea of this “healthier” market demand when the First Lady called. I would guess they hadn’t acted earlier because they were crunching numbers to see if they can justify the venture in terms of economics. Regardless of their motives, Wal-Mart had arrived at a sensible plan to make changes in its operation. The changes include reducing sodium content of their products by 25%, eliminating industrial trans fats and added sugar. There were some indication of other plans but none were specific according to the New York Times.

Some readers had criticized Wal-Mart’s lack of aggression in this campaign. It’s a long time coming project but it should be on a much wider scale, I agreed. But I thought it is at least a right step in the right direction. My experiences tell me that Wal-Mart may be right about its slow-and-steady strategy, necessary to make solid and meaningful changes rather than being a quick fix knee-jerk reaction.

“The changes will be introduced slowly, over a period of five years, to give the company time to overcome technical hurdles and to give consumers time to adjust to foods’ new taste, Mr. Dach said. “It doesn’t do you any good to have healthy food if people don’t eat it.”

Quoted from the New York Time Article, and I find this reasonable enough. We need a few years to be weaned off our addiction to processed food. Even if we are still eating CAFO-beef some years down the road, I would be happy to know that we are at least eating more vegetables. I am also pretty stoked that Wal-Mart is addressing a food-justice issue:

[T]he problem of “food deserts” — a dearth of grocery stores selling fresh produce in rural and underserved urban areas like Anacostia. . .

A range of studies has shown that low-income people, especially those who receive food stamps, face special dietary challenges because eating healthy costs more and healthier food is harder to get in their neighborhoods. James D. Weill, president of Food Research and Action Center, an organization that has discussed the problem with Wal-Mart, said the company recognized “how much hunger and food insecurity there is in the country.”

Wal-Mart proposed to address this problem by building more stores in low-income areas and increase charitable contributions for nutrition programs. I find this intention honorable. Please allow me to digress: Recently, an Aldi store opened in my neighborhood. I have never been to an Aldi before, Lauren was ecstatic about showing me what it is. I soon realized that it’s public image associates with low-income, since it stocks mostly cheap discounted and off-brand items. But I find the store extremely well managed and purposeful. The store shopping carts requires a Quarter for deposit, through an ingenious mechanism, to accommodate your shopping experience. At the end of your shopping, you simply return the cart to its rightful place and get your Quarter back. The place also does not have employees to help bag, but instead has a bench area for shoppers to put their groceries in their own “green” bags – the store does not offer plastic or paper! I’ve also found broccoli that is packaged right here in Indianapolis, but I can’t tell if it is grown here.

This got me thinking, if Wal-Mart can perform on this efficient level, and get into the low-income areas, it could potentially help equalize a lot of things in our society. Since food is a basic building block of our lives, its equal access will offer us some other tangible ways of achieving equality. Wal-Mart can also help popularize the kind of sustainable and efficient business practices Aldi has employed.

All hopes aside, I recognize that Wal-Mart has to do this the right way. Its honorable intentions means nothing if it does not follow a sustainable philosophy, and start buying its produce and livestock from local vendors. It must also bare a large responsibility in facilitating legislation that will allow local farmers the same degree of support and regulator attention as their CAFO counterparts, and hold CAFOs to the higher health standards and biodiversity. As a small business owner, I understand the value and necessity of the marketplace. I believe that a corporation as influential as Wal-Mart can do a whole lot of our social progress. But it is a fine line to walk on the path of philanthropy and profit, and it’s also a fine line between 1984 and 2084. I submit to you Exhibit A, (imagine if you will):

“In addition to proposing to lower prices on healthy foods, Wal-Mart is planning to develop criteria, and ultimately a seal, that will go on truly healthier foods, as measured by their sodium, fat and sugar content.”

A useful collection of essays

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 12:00:00 +0000

First, a disclosure: I contributed to two of the articles in this volume, so I obviously have my biases. Therefore, this review will be more a description about the book than a rating.

So, what is the Berkshire Encyclopedia of Sustainability: The Law and Politics of Sustainability and who might benefit from it? Basically, the book is a collection of academic essays about various subjects related to environmental law and politics, including country overviews, treaties, and major events. The essays are written by experts on each subject, mostly but not exclusively academics. I know for my articles I tried (and succeeded) to recruit some of the top experts on each country. The articles (or at least the ones I've seen) usually go beyond a dry checklist of environmental laws and discuss the role of the courts, prominent cases, and current controversies. However, the entries don't necessarily mention every single environmental law from a jurisdiction. Rather, the entries are most useful for familiarizing readers with the major issues or concepts.

Another thing that might be useful to note is that the book is very accessible. The entries (again, those I wrote or read) were are professionally written and do not dumb the material down. The intended audience is largely lawyers and students of environmental law and politics. However, the entries are also written clearly and without too much technical jargon. The folks at Berkshire Publishing put a premium on accessibility, even to the point that an intelligent high school student could possibly read one of the entries and comprehend most of it.

Having done research on comparative environmental law myself, I know how tough it can be to get an overview of a country's environmental law framework. I think this book is intended to make that type of research just a bit easier. Hopefully it proves useful.

New Resource Bank Quick Tip by davidryal

Sun, 7 Mar 2010 21:04:33 +0000

NRB is the best bank in the Bay Area for sustainability-conscious consumers and businesses.

"Seeds of Sustainability": no-brainer sprouting (no more moldy sprouts!)

Mon, 7 Dec 2009 04:53:49 +0000

Seeds of Sustainability is worth tracking. The fun thing about the sprouting method they are sharing is that it was a brilliant unexpected discovery one day when all they expected to find was spoiled sprouts left-too-long.

I am betting there is no one out there who has attempted germinating sprouts {for highly nutritious food source) that has NOT forgotten to rinse them, and thus ended up with a rotting mess!. Well, that's not what happened here. Instead, an epic breakthrough.

http:wm ode="transparent" /classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" /www.youtube.com/watch?v=imgHniD5QYs&feature=player_embedded

Getting a grip on greening

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:00:00 +0000

David Owen pops holes in environmentalists' cartoon thought balloons to help us see the world as it is, instead of how we think it is. He is adept at reframing one's thinking with examples and explanations that make simple sense.

The greenest people in America? Manhattanites--with the lowest average carbon footprint in the country. We sustainability-mongers tend to tout Portland or Seattle or San Jose, but New York has them all beaten hands down for walkability, transit, density and energy efficiency. (So much for the years I spent going back-to-the-land ... which I learned on my own were bucolic and energy intensive.) We need to implement NYC's successes in cities around the world.

Miles per gallon is the key to reducing auto emissions, right? Wrong. It's the odometer not the gas gauge that is most important in scalable reduction of carbon emissions. Driving less is far more significant than driving a hybrid. (And I thought my Prius was the answer ...) We need to create cities that eliminate driving for as many people as possible.

LEED certification is an important key to a sustainable building future? Not so fast. LEED is well intentioned, but it is very much a consumerist approach to building that emphasizes expensive gadgetry over meaningful conservation. Building smaller, reasonably efficient dwellings is a far better societal strategy than building large, high-end, LEED certified mansions. The LEED standards have also made conservation appear too expensive to average folks and actually discouraged the move toward more sustainable practices. We need to emphasize changes that everyone can make in their own lives, now.

This is a fine addition to the literature on sustainability, and potentially a real game changer for those who are working toward a green future.

A manifesto, not a strategy

Sat, 1 Aug 2009 12:00:00 +0000

The "sustainability" seems to be the biggest buzzword these days, and an increasing number of institutions are judged according to whether they espouse sustainability in their practices or not. Many college campuses are abuzz with student and faculty led groups that are trying to implement sustainability as one of the core missions of their educational institutions. The word is primarily associated with the environmentalism, and implies judicious use of energy and resources. It has supplemented the old mantra of conservation, but the impetus behind its use is more or less the same. Most of these efforts are viewed with skepticism by administrators, since they impinge on budgetary matters and by and large complicate the everyday operations of the institution. The business community in particular is very uneasy with this latest fad of sustainability, since it threatens the most (some would argue the only) important consideration that businesses have: profitability. In his book "Strategy for Sustainability: Business Manifesto" the author Adam Werbach tries to appeal to the business community by arguing that a clear strategy of sustainability is beneficial for company's bottom line as well. The greatest strength of the book is its lack of knee-jerk ant corporatist attitude, and a clearly stated appreciation of the goods that business can offer to the society at large. However, the book still comes across as overly preachy and sanctimonious. There are many good ideas tossed in there, but there is no clear strategy on how to implement them. There are also no cost-benefit analyses' presented, which in the light of the previous sentence is not all that surprising: it is hard to make a quantitative analysis when there is no concrete plan of action that is to be implemented. The book is full of cute anecdotes that try to illustrate the main points, but ultimately have the effect of making one unable to take the overall massage too seriously. The main effect that it may have on the business community is to provide them with a new set of phrases and talking points.

Passion yes, clarity ?

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:00:00 +0000

First, read Robert Morris' thorough 5-star review to get an overview of this book's contents.

The author's frustration at not being able to persuade New Orleans' leaders of the risks of a hurricane inspired this book. I appreciate the passion. However, I came away confused, feeling that perhaps the passion was driving his writing faster than he could evaluate what actually reached the page; that perhaps there were more thoughts behind the words than were actually communicated by the ink on the paper.

Points:
p7: "Innovate differently, and win, or continue to innovate narrowly, and lose." Has Werbach not read The Innovator's Dilemma? "Innovating differently" is an enormous challenge to established companies and isn't going to be solved by exhortation.

p. 20: "Nature obsesses over protecting its young." No, only for some vertebrates. Not for oysters, or pine trees, or any of the bazillion R-strategist species, which have better survival profiles in unstable environments than the K-strategists that invest heavily in gestation and nuturing babies.

p. 20: "Integrate metrics. Nature brings the right information to the right place at the right time. When a tree needs water, the leaves curl." Huh? This is the place where I began to wonder whether there was some major additional thinking behind the words because the words didn't make sense to me. How on earth are curling leaves metrics information to the tree? Curling leaves are a survival "behavior," and perhaps metrics to someone with a watering can. But I don't water trees...

(There's actually a whole lot more on this particular page that leaves me scratching my head, pondering how the author's view of nature-as-business-model is different from mine. Population explosions in many species, followed by famine-driven die-offs, are pretty common in the nature I know.)

The story about Circuit City's failure on p. 26: "The company's human resource strategy failed." Did the strategy fail, or did they fail to follow the strategy? Maybe it's a nit, but this is a book about strategy.

Strategy #7: "Only the truly transparent will survive." OK. I'll allow that as a premise. However, the example provided is how the totally opaque functioning of AIG and its mortgage-backed securities drove the collapse of the company. I don't see that this example proves the point.

Enough already. I think this book makes an important contribution, and I wish I didn't have to work so hard to figure it out. Being sustainable is hard enough.

"The best time to plant a tree is a 100 years ago. The second-best time is now." Chinese aphorism

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:00:00 +0000

As Adam Werbach explains in the Introduction, all companies have the opportunity to formulate and then execute a strategy that will enable them to avoid severely damaging if not fatal problems such as those encountered within the last 12-18 months by major corporations such as AIG, Bear Stearns, Chrysler, and General Motors. This book, he adds, "is about developing and executing a company's strategy that takes into account all aspects of sustainability but that is useful enough to be implemented today. It's about involving employees and the community in every part of the process. And it's about survival." He asserts that true sustainability has four coequal components, all of which must be accommodated by the strategy that is require: social (i.e. acting as if other people matter), economic (i.e. operating profitably), environment (i.e. protecting and restoring the ecosystem), and cultural (i.e. protecting and valuing cultural diversity). "In building a strategy for sustainability, companies must accept that a constant state of change is becoming the status quo. Sustainable organizations celebrate positive action in the face of bureaucracy and indifference." More often than not, positive action encounters culture resistance, what James O'Toole so aptly describes as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom."

Readers will appreciate the fact that Werbach is a diehard pragmatist. He bases his observations and recommendations on a wealth of practical experience, on an abundance of empirical evidence, and is almost wholly preoccupied with understanding and then explaining what works, what doesn't, and why. He is also an idealist in that he passionately believes in what can be accomplished if a sufficient number of principled and determined people work together in a movement (actually a mission, if not a crusade) to achieve sustainability in all dimensions of humanity that include but are by no means limited to business activities. He identifies and then discusses what he characterizes as "Nature's Simple Rules" as a basis of strategy and execution. They are:

1. Diversity across generations to support long-term species survival.
2. Adapt and specialize to the changing environment with precise navigation and adjustment to changes of climate, food, and predators.
3. Celebrate transparency by knowing where and what are dangerous as well as where and what are not.
4. Plan and execute systematically, not compartmentally, by devising solutions that optimize the entire system rather than individuals.
5. Form groups and protect the young by developing strengths and resources that are sufficient to the threats.
6. Integrate metrics as Nature does by obtaining the right information, applying it in the right situation at the right time.
7. Improve each cycle because evolutions can be harsh "but it's a strategy for long-term survival."
8. Right-size regularly, rather than downsize occasionally, because "organisms adjust to be as small or large as necessary."
9. Foster longevity, not just immediate gratification, because Nature "does not support unlimited growth or inefficient use of resources, but it does foster longevity."

And then one of Werbach's most valuable insights:

10. Waste nothing, recycle everything, and borrow little. "One organism's waste is another's food. Some of the greatest opportunities in the twenty-first century will be turning waste (inefficiency, underutilization, energy waste) into profit."

He also identifies and then discusses what he characterizes as "Seven Tenets of a Strategy for Sustainability":

1. Natural resources will become increasingly scare and expensive. Companies need to take full advantage of ecosystems services that are already available.
2. Massive demographic change is occurring. There will be three billion more people on the planet by 2040, mainly where humanity has not yet achieved a stable standard of living. There is a compelling need to alleviate "global inequities that destabilize business and society."
3. People are the most important renewable resource. "When nature right-sizes, it tends to weed out the weakest, not those with the most wisdom and experience." Organizations that achieve sustainable success are meritocracies.
4. Cash flow matters more than quarterly earnings. Companies must not focus on earnings because they do not account for the cost of capital, because there are so many acceptable ways by which to calculate them, and because they do not include additional capital that a company will need for future growth.
5. Every organization's operating environment will change as dramatically in the next 3-5 years as it has changed in the last five. Werbach notes that the process "for developing strategy must accommodate nonlinear, lockstep change. Traditional strategy making and execution is linear."

Note: He recommends a five-step process: First, Discover: Assess the business context, establish a mission, vision, and values. Next, Define: Define competitive advantage and establish goals. Then Plan: Translate the strategy into an operations plan with measurable objectives. Next, Execute: Execute with cult-like passion and excellence. Finally, Measure: Measure, review, and refine.

6. A chaotic external world requires internal cohesion and flexibility. "Organizations with high initiative fatigue frequently suffer from the failure to build a powerful leadership coalition and lack an engagement effort that connects the initiative to the daily routines of the affected employees."
7. Only the truly transparent will survive. "Opacity is the enemy of sustainability (and, as we have witnessed lately, an incubator of managerial paranoia, incompetence, isolationism, and corruption). You must have pertinent, accessible, and engaging information available inside and outside the organization."

Through his narrative, Werbach makes brilliant use of reader-friendly devices, including checklists such as these as well as mini-commentaries such as "Does `Built to Last Mean' Sustainable?" (Pages 38, 41-42) and Tables such as "Comparison of a built-to-last strategy with a strategy for sustainability (Pages 39-40). He explains how to formulate a different way to formulate a business strategy, how to map available opportunities, how to "set a North Star" and initiate the "TEN" cycle, how to use transparency to execute strategy, engage individuals throughout (and beyond) the given enterprise, how to establish and strengthen a "network of sustainability partners," and how to develop leadership at all levels and in all areas. My frequent use of the phrase "how to" is intentional, correctly emphasizing Werbach's pragmatic approach throughout the book.

He concludes with an especially appropriate excerpt from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series: "If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat. Life is a level of complexity that almost lies outside our vision; it is so far beyond anything we have any means of understanding that we just think of it as a different class of object, a different class of matter; `life,' something that had a mysterious essence about it..." Given that, what does Adam Werbach suggest? "When a situation seems too complicated grasp, grasping it isn't always necessary or even possible - so do what you can, when you can. Act now."

Those who share my high regard for this brilliant book are urged to check out Werbach's Act Now, Apologize Later as well as Mark Gottfredson and Herman Saenz's The Breakthrough Imperative: How the Best Managers Get Outstanding Results, Dean R. Spitzer's Transforming Performance Measurement: Rethinking the Way We Measure and Drive Organizational Success, and Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution co-authored by Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, and David Robertson.

Rethinking the Business Model

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:00:00 +0000

I opened this book without much enthusiasm, expecting an informative if rather dry overview of various business models. I was surprised and pleased to find and engaging account of how certain showcased companies have really thought out their place in the economy, community and world and what they've done to ensure their survival and profitability. Adam Webach's insights are peppered throughout and are, well, rather insightful. Even if business strategy is not what you consider a topic for light reading, you may find that this book surpasses that genre. I read all 242 pages in just two sittings and late at night when other books, even ones I enjoy, have put me to sleep.

SfS:ABM reads more like a thoughtful news magazine article than a book, with the tales of various companies' business models (like Wal-Mart, Dell and Toyota) making for a good flow. These stories really do provide new business strategy frameworks that are attuned to the current world environment, flexible enough to respond to rapid change, and focused on the long view. Even if you don't own your own business, there is useful and thought provoking information here. Information that will make you look at the economy, businesses and consumers in a whole new light. Success does not really depend on one or two things, rather a whole web of them, working together. The recent economic hardships in the US and the world really bring that point home, and success/sustainability is only possible by considering the big picture,not just a part of it. If you bring nothing else away from Werbach's book then make it that.

A must read for company owners and those that make policy in companies, and recommended reading for those who wonder how our economy can survive and flourish in the present uncertain times and for years to come.

Absolutely worth owning whether you agree with it all or not

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:00:00 +0000

This book's impact on you will vary depending on your level of familiarity with the topic in general. I think The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream and The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies do a better job of making people (who may not otherwise) genuinely consider the implications of the oil-dependant lifestyle.

This book's attention to California and China makes perfect sense to me. Two of the biggest, most stagnant, traffic-jamming, polluting regions require some of the most critical, innovative thinking and solutions. Think of it like this: As California and China go, so goes the world... for better or for worse.

I like the way "the threat" of alternative fuels is shown to have sparked some of the cleaner trends in the oil/automotive industries. Some of the fuels chapter is lacking, though. It's tough to read a whole chapter like that yet never find the words "switchgrass" or "nanosolar". One could certainly say that one of the Modern Marvels Enviro Tech episodes, as well as a National Geographic issue from 2007 or early '08 (I need to flip through them to check the year) did a better job.

I also wonder why so much effort was expended trying to convince readers we're nowhere near Peak Oil. The Industrialized World is built on the premise of the path of least resistance. Trying to convince people we have 200 years worth of plentiful oil is going to make most people say "Okay cool. Call me again in 180 years when this is important".

I have issues with these and another part of this book, as may you. Still, I'd be happy to find out that it (and others) was being given and taught to every Jr. high and highschool science class/student in the USA. The sooner and more pervasively we get kids dreaming, wondering and thinking about these issues, the more chance we have of reaching those handful of the future's brilliant minds who may help us out of this mess.

On a side note, you'll find yourself thinking about Buckminster Fuller's dymaxion car throughout. The whole world suffers from not listening to him all those years ago.

extremely thorough presentation...

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:00:00 +0000

Ok, so there are currently about 1 billion cars on the planet and in 20 years there will be 2 billion cars. And you think its hard to find a parking space now?

The book lays out a very well researched and convincing argument that we must shift our current attitudes and move to much lower impact vehicles. Now.

I try to stay pretty current in regards to energy conservation, energy use, etc... I learned a lot in this book. For instance I have often heard that we have plenty of oil in Colorado and up in Canada in the form of shale oil and tar sands to help us offset our use of Middle east oil. I also heard that getting usable gas from these sources was "slightly" more energy intensive. The thing you never hear is that tar sand from Canada and shale oil from Colorado produce 60% more greenhouse gases AFTER they are refined in that "more energy intensive" process. Even though its gas, it produces 60% more greenhouse gases because light sweet crude from Saudi Arabia is a smaller branch chain oil, while tar sands are a very long branch chain oil. The extra length appears to be carbon dioxide and other nasty gases. That does not sound like a viable alternative for me.

If you are looking for a source of information so you will have a better understanding of our energy situation, or just need talking points for your next party, then this book will do that and more. This book is packed with great information and it is backed up with references and charts. If you are trying to be more knowledgeable on this subject, than this is definitely the place to start.

Taking care of business and our world

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 12:00:00 +0000

Hawken's message is no less urgent 15 years after he wrote this landmark book on economic change. It is a message he refined as co-author (with the Lovinses) of NATURAL CAPITALISM: CREATING THE NEXT INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION (Little, Brown & Company, 1999), but this volume is more directly aimed at business owners. The author looks at the three ways that business interacts with the environment -- what it takes, what it makes, and what it wastes -- and shows that a fresh approach can be both profitable and life sustaining. If the book is dated at all, it is because things have gotten worse. Population was only (!) 5.8 billion when he wrote it, and humans were only (!!) using, consuming, clearcutting or burning, 40 percent of the net primary production (NPP) of the earth's land ecosystems. (NPP is the sum of all photosynthetic production minus the energy required to maintain and support those plants.) Both numbers have, of course, risen. Fortunately, during the 90s many of the world's governments have begun to embrace a new view of business and a new definition of profit and loss. The most significant holdout is, of course, the biggest taker, maker and waster -- us. (I must offer a disclaimer here: some Letterheads are not in the U.S.A., and therefore are absolved from this condemnation. Although, in owning computers, they are presumptively more like us than like the rest of the world.) Hawken's view in this book is so comprehensive, that it ought to be the blueprint for businesses in the 21st century. (I predict that it WILL be the blueprint for businesses that survive the 21st.) Ray Anderson, founder and CEO of Interface, the largest maker of carpet tiles in the world and a Fortune 500 company, clearly embraced Hawken's message when he revamped his company a few years ago: they are retooling with a stated goal of zero chimneys, zero waste pipes, zero landfill. Anderson took Hawken's message to heart and to the bank: waste is not just pollution, it is dollars down the drain. A business in tune with natural systems will not produce waste. Everything will recycle. In a neat resolution of apparent opposites, the author looks at optimistic claims that we can grow our way out of environmental problems -- viewing economic growth as the key to funding remediation -- versus pessimistic visions suggesting that we will exceed (perhaps have already exceeded) the carrying capacity of the planet. He notes that due to ever-improving extraction techniques, the pro-growth viewpoint is bound to work splendidly in the short term, and will do so right up until the day it fails. Because the pessimists are wrong in the short term, but are precisely correct about the more distant future. Unfortunately the pivotal point is hard to see coming. Hawken reminds us of the analogy of the twenty-ninth day, offered by ecologists including Dr. David Suzuki: "When algae take over a lake they grow exponentially, doubling every twenty-four hours, until the thirtieth day, when they effectively remove all oxygen from the water, killing all other forms of life. Since the algae bloom doubles daily, on the twenty-ninth day, it covers only half the lake, a reasonably benign condition as long as one does not take into account the nature of exponential growth." This offers not only a lesson in the speed with which collapse can come upon an ecosystem, but about the futility of technological fixes. If the oxygen in the lake were increased by 50 percent on that last day (a production boost that far exceeds human technological improvements in any short term) it would only forestall collapse by six hours. Businesses, governments and we ourselves ignore Hawken at our peril.

Valuable Perspectives on the "Ecology" of Strategic Alliance

Mon, 6 Sep 2004 12:00:00 +0000

As this book's subtitle correctly indicates, Iansiti and Levien explain "what the new dynamics of business ecosystems mean for strategy, innovation, and sustainability." They are quite correct when pointing out that, in recent years, in industries as different as personal computers and personal care products, "companies [have] leveraged multiple organizations in distributed supply chains, integrated technological components from a variety of business alliances, collaborated with a number of channel partners to distribute their products, and leveraged complementary services from banks, insurance providers, or retailers." As a result, many industries have been forced to create or become involved in a fully networked structure, one "in which even the simplest product or service is now the result of collaboration among many different organizations." (In fact, decades ago, American Airlines devised his "hub and spoke" strategy. However, this really is not what Iansiti and Levien have in mind.) For example, Microsoft and Wal-Mart have a decisive competitive advantage in large measure because they are "keystone" companies in their respective ecosystems. More specifically,

Both "of these firms understand that their fate is shared with that of the other members of their business network. Rather than focussing primarily on their internal capabilities (as many of their competitors did), they emphasize the collective properties of the business networks in which they participate, and treat these more like organic [in italics] ecosystems [end italics] than traditional supply chain partners. They understand their individual impact on the health of these ecosystems and the respective impact of ecosystem health on their own performance...[For that reason] "a new, holistic approach to strategy is critical to an increasingly broad range of firms in our economy as they face the new set of challenges and responsibilities created by competing in business ecosystems."

How? Given the evolution of business ecosystems which are analogous to biological counterparts, organizations today, regardless of their size or nature

(1) must decide if they are a keystone or niche "player" (Please see Part I)

(2) then formulate strategies appropriate to that role (Please see Part II)

(3) and finally, establish and build on one of three "foundations of sustainable performance in a business ecosystem" (Please see Part III)

"Keystone" companies such as Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Dell, and eBay create value within their respective ecosystems which is shared with other participants in that system. More specifically, they create high-value, sharable assets; leverage direct customer connections; create and manage physical and information hubs; support uniform information standards; create, package, and share state-of-the-art tools and building blocks for innovation; establish and maintain performance standards; build or acquire financial assets for operating leverage; reduce uncertainty by centralizing and coordinating communication, and reduce complexity by providing powerful platforms.

Obviously, few organizations can be (or should even attempt to be) a "keystone" or "dominator" company. According to the authors, keystone wannabes tend to pursue two quite different: "hub landlords" (e.g. Enron) extract as much value as possible from an ecosystem or ecosystem domain without integrating forward to control it whereas "hub dominators" (e.g. Apple) integrate vertically or horizontally to manage and control an ecosystem or ecosystem domain. Most organizations will correctly a strategy as a "niche" player by specializing in capabilities which differentiate them within an ecosystem domain. "Niche players are naturally dependent on other businesses. The essential step in defining a good niche strategy is therefore to analyze the firm's ecosystem and map out the characteristics of its key stone and dominator players." (Please see Chapters Six and Seven for a complete explanation of all this.)

All organizations involved in a given ecosystem must, of course, rigorously monitor but also take an active role in nourishing that system's health so as to promote and facilitate the leveraging of an enduring and evolving core. However, it remains for keystones to provide both the vision and the leadership needed, especially in response to market design, operation, and competition. They must also facilitate and support integration, innovation, and adaptation within their ecosystem. "This is the price that keystones must pay for their privileged position at the hub of a business network and as owners of enduring assets: Keystones [in italics] must [end italics] manage the health of their ecosystems as a key business strategy. The challenge for each niche player is to decide in which ecosystem to become actively involved with which keystones to be associated in a strategic alliance.

I wholly agree with Iansiti and Levien that "We are bound together by the nature of the relationships among products, technologies, markets, and innovation. Leveraging these relationships is critical to enhance firm productivity, to protect organizations from disruption, and to enhance their ability to innovate, evolve, and adapt. This means that no firm, product, or technology can be an island: No firm can afford to act alone, and no products can be designed in isolation." Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Christensen, Anthony, and Roth's Seeing What's Next: Using the Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change as well as Kaplan and Norton's The Strategy-Focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment.