* Sustainable Development

The Paradox in ‘Sustainable’ Innovations

The Paradox in ‘Sustainable’ Innovations

I want you to click on the picture of the ‘invention machine’ at the left and watch the video. As your watching the video, make a list of the things that (in your mind) make up ‘sustainable’ innovation, based on how they describe it to be.

Then, look at your list and consider how they are using the definition of sustainability. In some parts, they show energy efficient light bulbs, etc, suggesting that sustainability truly is influencing our thinking and methods of innovation. Hooray !

But wait a minute.

There’s something missing here. Look at the image above. Notice the direction of product coming out of the machine. Where are these products going? Isn’t a part of sustainability mean that everything becomes food for another system and another and another. Including possibly the system that made it in the first place? Yes. The full meaning of ‘sustainable innovation’ means that everything is defined in closed loops, not assembly lines that have no return.

Unfortunately, the way most folks are using the term ‘sustainable innovation’ is limited to defining processes that allow the continued production of stuff without considering its RE-production at the end of the product’s usable life cycle.

Closed Loop Metabolic Development System — Click on pic to access enlarged version

We are now entering a new age of innovation, and the principles sustainability are directly affecting how innovation is designed, manufactured, used, … and regenerated. The missing link in the video above is REGENERATION. All products, which are an outcome of innovation, must be designed into closed loop systems that do not allow for even the idea of waste to enter the equation.

Either we evolve the meaning of ‘sustainable innovation’ or we are merely making green stuff that is more efficient but still unclaimed at the end of an open cycle. This is not sustainable. Closed loop systems that are incorporated at the beginning of the product design process is the answer.

Social Innovation in Action: Vic Applies for the Bucky Fuller Design Challenge Award

* Collaborative Design, * Cultural Mythology, * Leadership Ecology, * Organizational Learning, * Social Innovation, * Sustainable Development 0

BuckyFuller Design Science Challenge:

How to shift innovation’s intent from creating intellectual widgets to forming intelligent societies.

I want to share that last week I applied for the Bucky Fuller Challenge Award. Hoping you will wish the inGENuity team and me lots of luck. Learn more at links to the story below. Vic 🙂

* the bucky challenge process
* ingenuity innovation center and land
* vic’s collaboration with ingenuity team

Ecological Design Principles

* Collaborative Design, * Sustainable Development balance, boundaries, Capra, cycle, design, dynamic, ecological, ecology, holistic, model, principles, systems 0

Principles of Ecology
From the Center for Ecoliteracy (By Fritjof Capra)

1-Networks
*Interdependence, Diversity, and Complexity*

The members of an ecosystem are interconnected in a vast network of relationships in which all life processes are interdependent and achieve stability through a diversity of linkages.

2-Boundaries
*Scale and Limits*

At all scales of nature, we find living systems nesting within other living systems, each within its own boundary and limits.

3-Cycles
*Recycling of Resources and Partnership*

The interactions among members of an ecological community involve the exchange of resources in continual cycles so that all waste is recycled through pervasive cooperation and countless forms of partnership: on the planetary scale, each of the elements vital for life goes through a closed loop of cyclic changes.

4-Flow Through
*Energy and Resources*

The constant flow of solar energy sustains life and drives ecological cycles, all organisms feed on flows of energy and resources, each species producing output that is food for other organisms.

5-Development
*Succession and Coevolution*

The unfolding of life, manifesting as development and learning at the individual level and as evolution at the species level, involves an interplay of creativity and mutal adaptation in which organisms and environment coevolve.

6-Dynamic Balance
*Self-Organization, Flexibility, Stability, and Sustainability

All ecological cycles act as feedback loops so the ecological community regulates and organizes itself, maintaining a state of dynamic balance characterized by continual fluctuations.

Going Beyond the Idea of ‘Conscious Capitalism’

* Collaborative Design, * Cultural Mythology, * Leadership Ecology, * Organizational Learning, * Social Innovation, * Sustainable Development 0

The following are my comments to an associate who went to the ‘Conscious Capitalism’ conference.

I anticipated when I reviewed Gil’s notes from the ‘Conscious Capitalism’ Conference, that I would be brought into a state of aggravation. Expecting that the language would point to the same old talk about doing good business, while actually covering up that its not doing ‘good’. BUT, I was pleasantly surprised! I’m so relieved, and quite jazzed, about seeing signs of real change, captured within key phrases that were noted. A shift in the integrity of mind and heart about business and the model of capitalism.

His notes suggest to me that, just maybe, we are finally around the knee of the wake up curve, where many of the speakers seemed to be recognizing the need for a different kind of change in business, that so far has merely been rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Within the language of his notes, there are signals of a readiness to alter our formula for what business is, how we do it, and why … what it’s real purpose is. While moving away from concepts that have merely cloaked more of the same destructive activity that continues to occur.

I will also be so bold (dare I say?) that I was relieved not to see the word used that has represented a mission we have all adored as our savior for so many years – ‘sustainability’. LOL! Suggesting to me we have to go beyond what it represents in order to achieve it.

Finally, to also see that people were questioning even the conference theme itself (as in the last note) by stating: “Does the phrase ‘conscious capitalism’ further instill the corporation with misplaced personhood?” This is where I hope to see a powerful generative conversation to emerge. Because behind its teeth are answers we’ve been seeking.

Sustainability is Only for the Rich

* Sustainable Development 0

I’ve never been able to grock how the well-known triple bottom line phrase ‘people planet profit’ has anything to do with sustainability. Please tell me how ‘profit’eering has anything to do with creating healthier societies and a balanced earth ecology?

My interpretation of people, planet, profit goes like this: Elitist PEOPLE who PROFIT from others get to use the PLANET however they want, and make the laws that allow them to do so.

Below is a great example of this, and how ‘doing good’ in order to ‘save the planet’ has nothing to do with human well being. Unless of course you are one of the monetary elites. And so what about the rest of us??

Look. If an organization like EPA is going to create over-arching rules that ban things, they have to also create solutions to replace what will be taken away by the ban. In this case, it means giving every poor person, whose wood stove is no longer usable by law, a stove that is useable. This has to be added to the policy or guess what? It’s not “sustainable”. … Duh.

Well, it’s time for me to go find a cold rock to sleep under, because my wood stove has just now been banned. Sleep tight all you environmental extremists who have a pay check that allows you to buy your warmth, and ignore what is really happening here.

Read this article and you tell me what’s right about non-democratic organizations like the EPA proclaiming new laws in this way? http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2014/01/29/epas-wood-burning-stove-ban-has-chilling-consequences-for-many-rural-people

God I’m pissed.