What is Sustainable Innovation?

Fundamentally, sustainable innovation is about DESIGN – any kind of design – from widgets (products/services), to group process and organizational architecture, to full-on societies. It refers to an emerging new way of thinking. Creative, practical philosophies that are the foundation for Discovery Fuel’s work. Why? Because ‘sustainable‘ innovation has now become the primary global driving force behind business growth, technology, and world-social advancement.

The Systems View of Life (click pic for video)

Watch this video on a Systems View of Life, and review these thought-provoking guidelines; A Set of Sustainability Principles and Concepts for Sustainable Design, to get a flavor for how brand new (w)holistically-conceived frameworks are changing the way we innovate, design, and shape our world.

Regenerative Restorative Loop

The basic premise asserts that, to design well, you must start with the WHOLE SYSTEM (see these extended definitions 1, 2, 3), which in practical terms needs be several orders of magnitude larger in scope than the specific system being designed (see Bucky Fuller principles). In other words, sustainable innovation is the process whereby the connections between the structure being designed, related processes, and the patterns which emerge, are recognized and intentionally ‘hooked up’ into a closed loop interdependent system; an ‘ecology of design‘. True innovation taps into emergent properties that are latent within all systems, which is literally one vast inexhaustible resource available to all humanity for creating and sustaining a livable future.

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A common example of sustainable innovation in practice is stakeholder involvement in the solving of complex organizational problems. In this case, even though the stakeholders may not have a completely vested interest in the immediate success of the organization, or even specific decision making authority, they are nonetheless significant due to their potential impacts, whether positive or negative. It is this ‘impact potential’ that signals the necessity for recognizing interconnected links between the components of the system being developed, and then using that awareness to inform all organizational design decisions. This collaborative design effort is what Discovery Fuel’s Colabs™ are all about.

From Fractured-Parts To Fractal-Wholes

Another example is Nature; which is truly a whole system; an ecosystem, that is tightly integrated into one global unit which carries unique varieties of form within an enmeshed network of fractal wholes. An economy, a family, a company, a community, etc., can also be viewed as whole systems. A whole system view would include all the factors involved by examining how they relate to each other and how they work together as a whole. To deal with a whole system, we can not leave anything out as irrelevant.

Note that intuition (or gut sense) is an important “rationale” to be included in whole system design process. A convergence of both scientific (rational) and artistic (irrational, or intuitive) approaches are necessary to become aware of the “whole system”, as well as material and spiritual needs, small as well as big, what we think AND FEEL, and what we perceive as well as what we imagine.

Using principles of sustainability as a catalyst, Discovery Fuel’s primary objective is to help your company realize deeper forms of collaborative, sustained INNOVATION. We seek to work with your whole organization – the “whole system,” while considering the inter-dependencies of factors that influence an innovative outcome. To do this, we look beyond environmental conditions to a blend of economic viability, ecological stewardship, and social equity (known as the triple bottom line – also see matrix. We consider how individual values become a valued product or service, how your organization learns, and what drives healthy decision-making.

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This defines a deeper nature of “sustainability” using a tri-lens (ecology-economy-equity) to view the outcome (see  triple bottom line map). Ultimately, this is about realizing new forms of sustainable innovation. This has become the primary driving force behind business growth, technology inception, global community development, and overall: the creation of a regenerative commerce system.

For more information, see innovation mapping and the sustainable innovation paradox. Or contact Vic Desotelle directly for a conversation.