Adam Menter’s Blog

Net Impact SF helped convene and facilitate the UnConference portion of Sustainable Brands ‘09. The UnConference ran parallel to the main conference sessions on Monday, June 1st. The idea was to help curate more in-depth conversation around the topics that were at the top of conference-goers’ minds.

I led a session about reverse logistics and the materials flows in our economy. I had initially entitled the session “Making Cradle to Cradle Work” because I wanted to prompt a deeper discussion about C2C and put it in context with other forms of recycling and reverse logistics. C2C is such a compelling idea - but I hear a lot of hype and not a lot of new case studies or more advanced thinking. I was fortunate that Mike Biddle from MBA Polymers was interested in joining the conversation. We ended-up co-leading the session. MBA Polymers recycles plastic from e-Waste. They are using processes that are similar to mining to ‘upcycle’ a complicated, mixed stream of waste (grade/use of original plastic = grade/use of recycled plastic). It’s pretty cool. Mike showed a video, which I can’t find online (but here’s a shorter one).

Going into the discussion, I created a the following visual aid to show some of the the material flows in our economy. I couldn’t find an existing diagram that showed the flows the way I wanted (feel free to re-purpose/re-use or suggest improvements)…

I used this diagram in a quick and dirty slide deck with some thought-starters and discussion prompts. The slides provided a nice reference point to help frame the discussion. It allowed the conversation to be organic and I thought it was a nice balance between winging it and actually preparing a presentation. All of the slides can be viewed online below or downloaded as a .ppt or .pdf.

One of the points I wanted to make in the session - was that there is a lot that each of us can do to reduce our environmental impact by how we choose to aquire, care for, and dispose of our stuff. Specifically, I wanted to talk about buying used stuff (re-using) and repair. These are two aspects of responsible consumption that I don’t hear enough about. You get a lot of eco-cred for buying a brand new Toyota Prius, but not necessarily for buying a used Ford or Honda. It seems that people show-off products like the Prius as eco-badges that prove their commitment to the cause. I wanted to create something similar for used and repaired items, so I whipped up some EcoBadges on Zazzle. These are stickers that you can put on your used or repaired items to start a conversation about the importance of extending the use phase of the stuff that’s already in our economy. I handed some out at the UnConference and now anyone can order them online. (I borrowed this idea from WattzOn). Below is an image of the two stickers I created.

Being in San Francisco, and in being involved in the green design community, I have the priviledge of being able to attend a slew of great events every year. I’ve long thought that I should somehow try to communicate what I’m seeing and learning via this blog - but never take the time to actually do so. Here is an attempt…

I attended this morning’s session of the Greener By Design conference (shared a pass with a colleague of mine at Autodesk).

Here is a copy of my notes, all in a pretty accessible mindmap format. And below are some quick impressions of some of the presentations.

Tom Szacky - CEO of TerraCycle (pictured above) - I was impressed with Tom’s presentation. I’m familiar with them from their worm poop/plant food product (I always lament the limited production capacity of my own worm composter), but I wasn’t aware that they’re working on several fronts to productize other waste streams. TerraCycle is actually trying to become the go-to solution deriving value from non-recyclable waste streams (i.e. CapriSun packages turned into bags/wallets). They’re partnering with big companies and engaging “brigades” of consumers to help them collect and separate usable waste streams (their raw materials). With my long-standing interest in closed-loop production cycles and reverse supply chains, this is definitely a company I’ll be watching. (check out the notes for more from Tom’s preso)

Packaging Outside the Box - Wendy Jedlicka from o2, Uri Kogan from HP, and Tony Knoerzer from PepsiCo. This was an interesting and diverse panel. Uri talked about HP’s laptop-bag as packaging experiment with Wal-Mart (nice idea, but perhaps just another bag to collect dust in the long run), Tony talked about Sun Chip’s new compostable bag, and Wendy talked about systems thinking and the practice of sustainable package design. Wendy’s a wealth of information about the nuts-and-bolts of sustainable package design. A few of the high-level slides she showed are below:

GreenOps - A project from Waste Management that involves consumers returning their recyclables to kiosks in stores like Whole Foods, having visibility into the content and volume of their recycling, and getting reward points for it (like RecycleBank, it seems). A cool idea in some ways, but my gut reaction is that it’ll be difficult to gain traction on a large scale. We’ll see. Below is an image of how the system works. (Update from after the Sustainable Brands Conference (6/1/09): GreenOps presence at SB ‘09 left a really bad taste in my mouth. It seemed like all marketing hype for a fundamentally flawed system. They attracted attention to themselves by having attractive young women wear skimpy dresses made from recycled plastic. All spin and no substance. My two cents.)

Stay tuned for more scanned mindmaps from the past year or so (Net Impact conferences, Fortune Brainstorm Green, etc).

Reading Bill McDonough & Michael Braungart’s book, Cradle to Cradle, has been one of those defining moments in my career journey. The huge task of re-vamping our production cycles to make them more environmentally sane seemed like just the kind of big, hairy problem I wanted to apply my business, engineering, and design skills to. About five years have passed since I read the book and, looking around, I haven’t seen the idea gain much practical traction - despite all of the hype and excitement surrounding it. The idea that Waste=Food is a beautiful concept… and I hope it doesn’t have to remain just a concept.

That’s why I was excited last month when I exchanged a few preliminary e-mails with a big electronics OEM that was thinking of exploring and implementing a Cradle-to-Cradle initiative. Unfortunately, due to the state of the economy, it doesn’t look like the project is moving forward… which is a shame because, in my opinion, it’s only through tackling problems like this that are going to shift our economy onto the right course in the long term.

In the process of getting my head around what might be involved with such a project, I took another look at the state of things. Some thoughts and useful links are below:

• First of all, Fast Company ran a brilliant and brutal exposé on Bill McDonough & MBDC late last year: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/130/the-mortal-messiah.html.
• True Cradle-to-Cradle is more complicated than just improving e-Waste management and take-back programs… but better take back programs that get consumers to shift their perceptions about their products at the end-of-life is a requisite first step for C2C. Some big players have been working on this but it has a long way to go (and probably requires stronger legislation in the USA that goes beyond voluntary take-back, which consumers often have to pay for).
• For example, both Herman-Miller chairs and USPS Tyvek envelopes have Cradle-to-Cradle certification. But neither, to my knowledge, have the robust reverse supply chain that’s necessary to actually put industrial nutrients back into the supply chain. In HM’s case, consumers don’t have an easy way to return the items and there isn’t enough volume.  In Tyvek’s case, it’s also hard to actually return the product back to the manufacturer - and, even when it is returned, most of it ends up being downcycled.
• Best Buy seems to be shoring up it’s e-Waste recycling capabilities, a great initiative: http://www.bestbuyinc.com/news_center/02-19-09/best-buy-electronics-recycling-program-now-available-all-us-stores
• The facts that consumers always want new items and that businesses have gotten use to quick product cycles as an engine for growth are huge barriers for strategies like upgradeability, reparability, and durability. (Again, a shift in consumer perception is required).
• Folks have been thinking about this idea for a long time, even before popularized by C2C (and big industry trade groups exist like the Reverse Logistics Association).
• Further reading…
• The October 2008 issue of the International Journal of Production Economics has an article entitled “Cradle to cradle: Reverse logistics strategies and opportunities across three industry sectors” by Sameer Kumara and Valora Putnam.
• Reverse Logistics In the Computer Industry (2005) - Lays out the issues and a few solution strategies:
• BOOK: Environment Conscious Manufacturing (ECM)
• http://ewasteguide.info/ and  http://www.step-initiative.org/ - e-Waste sites with best practices, case studies, and information about initiatives.
• For information (and graphic images) about the eventual fate of our current e-Waste stream, check out this GreenPeace e-Waste site.

So, I guess at this point I can’t answer the question posed in the title of this blog entry. But one thing’s for sure, we can sure improve a whole hell of a lot… and I’d love to dig in and start trying.

I’ve been meaning to post the slides on visual recording and graphic facilitation that I prepared for a guest lecture I gave to CCA’s DMBA program in October of last year. Click here to download the PDF. It’s a short presentation that:

• Discusses some of the reasons for visual recording at group meetings
• Goes over a few different different situations and forms for recording
• Gives some pointers on the mechanics of recording (colors, fonts, etc)
• Offers suggestions for what content to capture (choosing form, using short-term memory, etc)
• Has examples of some simple fonts and graphics
• Suggests resources for further information

…and I gotta give props to Jump Associates - where I learned most of this.

I just submitted the above 3-D rendering to the Treasure Island Bike Rack Design contest. This concept is based on re-purposing old car parking meters to be used for bike parking.

This idea is particularly relevant to Treasure Island due to the redevelopment plan’s focus on sustainability, car independence, and pedestrian access. The out-of-context use of parking meters (i.e. in parks, on pedestrian walkways) serves as a constant reminder to Treasure Island’s residents and guests that we, as a society, need to get over our addiction to the automobile - and that biking is a viable option for transportation that is healthier and more environmentally conscious. Re-using our car parking infrastructure for bike parking makes an elegant statement about not only this shift in mindset about our mobility, but also about the potential to creatively re-use our waste.

As a San Franciscan who bikes everywhere, parking meters are already my preferred bike rack. I get frustrated with over-engineered bike parking solutions (i.e. the bike racks at GG Park’s Botanical Gardens and at the Legion of Honor) - so, with this contest, I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel too much. My original idea was simply to create a grid of parking meters. However, this does not meet the contest’s requirement of being able to secure bikes using all types of locks. If someone only had a loose cable lock, the bike could slip over the top of the meter.

I ended up with two complementary no-nonsense designs, both based on old parking meters and both designed to be functional/durable in demanding urban environments. The first is simply welding, or otherwise fastening, a cross-bar between two old parking meters to create a variation on the popular and functional U-rack design. This design allows both wheels to be securely locked to the rack. The second design is to fasten a closed metal loop to the parking meter pole, which allows a cable lock to be threaded through. While this design does not allow both wheels to be fastened directly to the rack (as the contest rules stipulate), most bikers don’t lock their bikes this way currently. From my observation, it’s more common to lock both wheels by running a cable through the front wheel and securing that cable with a single U-lock fastened to the frame/back wheel. These single meter/racks  have a smaller footprint and could more easily stand-alone at various places throughout the island.

The 3-D rendering was created with Google Sketch-Up. The quality of this rendering was limited both by my novice Sketch-Up skills (first ever!) and my computer’s processing power - but I think it conveys the idea pretty well.

(Or, referencing the top-notch Treasure Island music festival, they could go with David Byrne’s sweet bike rack designs for NYC: http://www.davidbyrne.com/art/bike_racks/index.php)

I’m currently reading The Fountainhead and I’ve recently passed the LEED exam, so I’m pretty interested in architecture and green building at the moment. This website from the American Institute of Architect’s COTE top-ten from 2008 is fantastic: http://www.aiatopten.org/hpb/grid2008.cfm. It shows ten green design projects and allows you to compare them across different measures like community, water, and energy.

My sister Lora and I ran a quick innovation workshop at a sustainability consulting firm yesterday. One thing we wanted to impress upon them is that being innovative is a state of mind that you can bring to all aspects of your work (not just in a brightly colored room or while wearing crazy hats). Setting the right conditions for innovative thinking - in my mind - often comes down to paying attention to the world around you, having fun, communicating openly, and trusting yourself. We also talked about the importance of letting the process diverge, being comfortable with ambiguity, and effectively harnessing different team members’ strengths at different times. We did made a quick hand-out to communicate some of this. Download the innovation handout.

We also crafted a pretty cool exercise that is fun and instructive of the power of co-creation. We called it “Doodle Fusion.” Here’s how it works:

1. Find a partner, a piece of paper, and a pen.
2. The first person draws a small squiggle. (i.e. looping curve)
3. The second person creates an object using those lines (i.e. a snowman)
4. The first person now draws a scene around that object (i.e. a small man with a pointy hat touching the snowman)
5. The second person finishes it off by adding a caption (i.e. Elf reiki training)

Some lessons to learn in this process are:

• You end up with something that neither of the two people would - or could - have created on their own.
• You create something that no one person owns, but that you both feel ownership of.
• You learn to build on others’ ideas instead of shutting them down. Furthermore, these builds can be productive in ways that you might not expect.
• Making ideas visual can be a powerful tool.

So besides being a really quick and fun game - Doodle Fusion has some important lessons that folks can take back to their teams at work.

You can even give it a try it at your next party…people will love it (but you might want to spare them the lessons-learned).

Last week was Jump Associates’ tenth anniversary celebration. Jump, being the learning-centric organization that it is, decided to host a mini-conference for the occasion. We still ate fancy cocktail weenies and drank lots of sangria - but only after listening to two days of fascinating presentations from our friends and colleagues in industry and academia. When we approached these people and asked them to present, we encouraged them to bring new material to the party. We figured they were tired of giving the same old presentations that they continually repeat at other speaking gigs. Plus we wanted to talk with them about what was currently on their minds.

I tried to take pretty good notes at the event (I’m honing my mind-mapping skills) and I thought I’d share this wonderful content with the world at large. Click on the image below to download a PDF of all of my notes (12 pages) and see my top-line thoughts below that.

Jim Adams - Stanford ME Professor
He laid out some basic human characteristics (we like power, we like growth, we like order, we operate on faith, etc…) and referenced the Ten Commandments as a way of beginning to think about why people resist doing what they should do. He mentioned that capitalism, because it is focused on constant short term growth, is inherently unsustainable. But attacking or rewiring capitalism is like seeking to change the Catholic church. Capitalism is taken as an article of faith by so many. Major change takes a long time - so have the long term view but enjoy the fruits of the moment.

Michael Fazio - Archideas - Designing for people with autism
He discussed designing spaces for people with autism - a project in which he is drawing inspiration and insights from his own autistic son. He was able to extract out some design principles by observing how his son is fascinated with patterns, loves sitting near open windows when it was freezing outside, and finds particular lights offensive. What it really comes down to is finding safe and effective ways to give autistic people more control over their environment (furniture you can tip over, adjustable lighting, under-floor air, sound, etc).

Sarah Beckman - UC Berkeley - Is Cross Functional Enough?
Companies nowadays are lauding the value of cross-functional teams. Sarah’s research suggests that understanding the learning style of the people on the team, and optimizing the team leadership to play to the strengths of different members of the team (potentially at different times throughout the course of a project) is actually more important than a person’s “function.” The learning styles she talked about were based upon Kolb’s experiential learning model. In general, she’s found that high performing teams converge AND diverge more, have a diversity of tolerances for ambiguity, and allow for fluid job responsibilities.

Keith Yamashita - SYPartners - Seeing: The missing skill in business
It was interesting to have Keith Yamashita speak after Sarah Beckman because they presented frameworks that mapped on top of one another (bottom center on my hand-written notes). Through his experience at Stone-Yamashita, Keith talked about how important it is to help organizations see the world in a new way. He described a SEE…BELIEVE…THINK…ACT loop. Companies love action but their thinking is bound to their beliefs - and the only way to change beliefs is to permit yourself to go truly explore and see the world. At Jump we talk a lot about having empathy for your customers and your employees - and at the end of the day, that’s what Keith was getting at.

Andy Hargadon - UC Davis - The business of design and the design of business
I’d seen Andy talk about the importance of networks and connections in innovation - a major theme in his new book: How Breakthroughs Happen. This talk went a bit deeper into how to understand the network of players and forces that make that innovations successful in the world. He talked about looking for shifts in the networks that are out there already and finding new ways to connect them. Ultimately, you want to be the conduit through which value flows. I especially enjoyed the case study about a fascinating website called MaxPreps, which is the clearinghouse for information and statistics for high school athletics. It’s designed in a way that athletes, parents, teachers, coaches, colleges, newspapers, and even photographers get something out of contributing content to the site. Since it is a win-win-win-win…, it has grown leaps and bounds.

Robyn Waters - RW Trends - Now What?
Robyn used to be the Vice President of Trend, Design, and Product Development at Target. After leaving that job to set off on life on her own terms, she’s spending some time to reflect on where she’s come from and where she’s going. Hers was one of the most personal and impactful talks of Jump@10. She talked about Finding Success, Finding Me, Finding Meaning, and, finally, Finding Joy. She’s a fabulous storyteller and anchored her stories with really powerful Zen koan-like sayings. Some of my favorites were:

“There’s no traffic jam on the extra mile.” (Chinese Fortune)
“He who deliberates fully before taking a step will spend his entire life on one leg.” (Chinese Proverb)

“It’s our choices that show what we really are, far more than our abilities.” (Dumbledore to Harry Potter)

“If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn’t have opened for anyone else.” (Joseph Campbell)

“Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.” (Confucius)

Amy Edmonson - Harvard Business School - Fear & Failure in Knowledge Organizations
Amy started off by talking about how she worked with Buckminster Fuller after graduating from college - and wrote a book about him after his death. Of course, I liked her immediately. Her talk was about how organizations fear and intolerance of failure hampers performance. She rightly claims that failure is mission critical to innovation - and that the real challenge is to learn how to fail intelligently. A requisite first step is creating an environment of psychological safety so that employees feel confident in sharing ideas that will benefit the organization. Organizations need to have a failure strategy and not send mixed messages about failure by telling employees that its okay to fail and then only compensating them for success. She referenced Sim Sitkin’s five conditions for failing intelligently: 1) Thoughtfully planned actions, 2) Uncertain outcome, 3) Modest scale, 4) Executed with alacrity, and 5) Sufficiently familiar environment to permit learning.

Sam Lucente - HP Design - HP @ 5
Sam talked about the challenges and opportunities that have been involved in his quest to use design more strategically within HP over his five year tenure as VP of Design. His Design to Simplify, Design to Differentiate, and Design to Innovate framework created a common language for executives to talk about how design can help the business (driving both top and bottom line results). While HP is an environment that prizes efficiency and appeals to the mass market, he talked a bit about how important it is to not compromise the “story” of iconic products by cost-cutting them to death (”You shall not kill iconic products”). Two of HP’s iconic products are a Voodoo Notebook thinner than the MacBook Air and the Blackbird gaming PC. He then ceded the floor to Debbie Mrazek of HP and Katherine Wakid from Jump to talk about Jump’s ongoing work with HP to better manage and measure the design process (work that I was involved with for over a year).

Last night I attended (and helped plan/host) the annual Topical Dinner night of the Net Impact San Francisco Professional chapter. The event went really well - which I find to often be the case when you put a lot of smart, motivated, interested, and interesting people together in the same room.

I sat at the Green Design table with Jeremy Faludi. Jeremy is currently an engineer at Project Frog, a company that designs modular green buildings targeted at the education market. The discussion laddered from the very abstract to the more-or-less concrete. Jeremy has a TON of really deep, applied experience in green design. He’s one of the few folks I know who have completely dedicated their career to sustainable design - and have made it work (or at least the first wave of these people).

It’s hard to get very deep into the practice of green design with a mixed discussion between green design experts/practitioners, those very interested and relatively knowledgeable about about green design (I count myself in this camp for now), and those who are new to it. To move from abstract theory to a deeper understanding of green design, there is simply no substitute for spending a lot of time trying to implement more sustainable solutions, wrestling with LCA tools like SimaPro, etc…

Some interesting tidbits that I did walk away with:

• Between 25 and 40% of all trash in landfills comes from construction waste (Project Frog’s modular system drastically reduces this).
• We had a good, basic discussion of biomimicry and I learned a little bit about Julian Vincent’s work in the UK.
• In many places, the majority of the energy used to condition air is spent de-humidifying it - not cooling it. While it takes 1 calorie to lower the temperature of air one degree, it takes 80 calories to turn the water vapor in that air into a liquid.
• Good product design is inherently evolutionary - i.e. testing lots of ideas, evolving and refining them throughout the process, and letting the best solutions rise to the top.
• While Europe is much further ahead in legislation and social norms around sustainability, America is often on-top for driving sustainable innovation.
• A few tools for Life Cycle Analysis (LCA):
• SimaPro LCA software - really in depth and complete. Leave it to the Swiss and the Dutch.
• EcoInvent - A database of the ecological impact of materials and processes. Plugs into SimaPro.
• A table-mate of mine from the Presidio School of Management talked about modifying the Total Beauty framework to quantify the environmental impact of SF landfill trash. I’ll have to admit I’m a bit skeptical about the rigorous and unbiased business application for a framework that is called “total beauty” and that starts its description with the statement: “Products are the source of all environmental problems.”
• WARM Calculator (WAste Reduction Model) - A tool from the EPA to help solid waste planners and organizations track and voluntarily report greenhouse gas emissions reductions and energy savings from several different waste management practices. (A bit over the top with the “warm” reference?)
• The OLPC’s hardware innovations are great (software…not so much), especially as they relate to energy efficiency. The OLPC can operate on less than 1 watt of power (0.2 watts in “reflective” mode). Regular laptops consume about 25 watts in use.

I recently read Innovation to the Core: A blueprint for transforming the way your company innovates by Peter Skarzynski and Rowan Gibson. It is probably the best book I’ve read about managing innovation. When folks ask me what I do at Jump, it usually takes some explaining. This book is a really good primer in a lot of the work I find myself doing on a daily basis - and attempts to answer many of the questions I find myself wrestling with.

The book provides good examples (primarily from Strategos’ work with Whirlpool) as well as concrete advice/tools. Their basic premise is that successful innovation can be made repeatable by making it more “core” to a company’s DNA and distributing innovation capacity throughout the organization. They are trying to do for innovation what Six Sigma did for quality…putting a flexible process around it, institutionalizing an innovation training program and job architecture, and making innovation a core value that everyone feels empowered to participate in.

The book is also a great example of affordance in design. Affordance is when an object’s form really conveys its function and method of use. A handle that begs to be gripped in a certain way. A latch that is in exactly the right spot and snaps open and shut intuitively. In this case, the book has wide margins on the edges of the page that invite note-taking and mark-ups. In addition to just being handy, this also messages that the book is meant to be engaged with, absorbed, and referenced back-to.