Posted on December 14, 2008 - by Vic Desotelle

Sustainability Reporting and the Creative Process

Which of you are familiar with the concepts of creativity, innovation, and sustainability?

I seek direction from you on how to incorporate ‘deep creative’ processes within Discovery Fuel’s emerging ‘sustainability reporting’ CoLaboratories.

The sustainability reporting phenomena is a rapidly growing trend within organizations world-wide and covers all sectors including business, NGO’s, communities/cities, education, and government. These reports help to clarify and monitor how well companies are improving their ecological, social, AND economic objectives (otherwise known as the triple bottom line); things such as material and energy usage efficiencies, as well as employment and customer satisfaction. These reports are also becoming powerful marketing tools for addressing the rapidly growing ‘cultural creatives‘ marketplace by providing authentic and transparent responses for the consumers who are asking for more value and ‘greenness’ in their purchases.

Presently, these reports are inspiring – yes, but they are usually organized using self-determined indicators development, which help to monitor company direction. This is wonderful and important, yet the reports can be rather dry in terms of their creation, implementation, and delivery. Staff may step into their reporting process feeling overwhelmed by the additional responsibilities that are generated to deliver a good report; thus adding more weight to their already daunting work load.

That said, these reports can enable so much more. They actually become touch stones for organizational and global transformation. They are a place where organizations can get swept into new realms of design and innovation; a way to expand their understandings of how to architect richer forms of innovation.

Additionally, outcomes from entering the sustainability process are: improved human(e) communication, enhanced product design and development processes, and a renewed awareness of the company’s impact on our Planet

Furthermore, the collaborative process that is necessary for creating these reports opens the door for deeper forms of creativity, thereby helping organizations realize unexpected forms of social and technical innovation, while also building a high sense of meaning among stakeholders and participants.

Discovery Fuel Colabs provides delivery on this vision. Presently, I am in need of more tools that generate brain-shifting, playful, and creative processes for making the reporting process more engaging and satisfying, so that organizations can ’sustain’ the process of annual reporting. I seek tools that can accommodate specific organizational needs, covering everything from designing amazing new forms of products and services (technical innovation) to changing the way companies greet each other and customers at their doorstep (social innovation).

Got ideas? Post them or email me.
Vic Desotelle