Eugene Eric Kim has been producing a lot of interesting content on his blog “EEK Speaks”. His run down of Socialtext 2.0 is great, and so is his post about a CIA sponsored workshop to discuss the subject of blogging and wikis. Excerpt:

“Many of the ideas centered around ways to encourage blogging or Wikis, but most of these were misguided. I think rewarding people for using a tool is generally a bad idea. What you want to do is reward people for collaborating.”

Introducing this style of collaboration to large organizations is on the verge of becoming a hot business topic. I’ve had some experience with it recently with large and small organizations, and the results have been encouraging.

Eugene is right with his assessment that cultural changes play a greater role than technological changes. People have a very easy time learning to use blogs and wikis. The broader and more relevant challenge for organizations is to help people understand the value of blogs and wikis, and therefore want to use them.

Plan Resonate was hired to develop an internal blogging system for SAP early this year. It has been a fun project and was a great opportunity to collaborate with Jeff Nolan, then director of SAP’s Apollo Strategy group. The story of how SAP developed and has been using the tool could shed light on how other large scale hierarchical organizations can adopt a culture of collaboration. Working on that project is an ongoing process and when time permits I’ll share some of the more interesting details of what we’ve been doing.
[tags]Eugene Eric Kim, collaboration, culture[/tags]

Context: It’s a shame to take this one out of context.

Question is “What would make energy and modelling services appealing enough for petroleum companies to invest in?”

Chris Ward (IBM) proposes to make supercomputing available as a service. Fred Busche (IBM) mentions that they’ve got a patent in the works that would cover the application in the oil industry. Adalio Sanchez (IBM, Jam Moderator) says “It just seems like we’re close here and that’s precisely what the Innovation Jam is all about…figuring out how to take the next steps to realize success.” Ward responds that IBM scientists all have access to the technology but

“to get from there to the point where we can sell the business off to Lenovo in maybe 20 years’ time, like IBM has just done with Personal Computers, IBM has to invest in developing the thing. IBM has to know what the clients want to buy. What’s the combination of ‘supercomputer’ (which will do the sums), and ‘know-how’ (skilled IBMers who can make it do the oil field analysis) that’s valuable to the people who have a commercial interest in the answers to the questions?”

If Adalio’s conclusions above are accurate (as a non-IBM’er I have no idea), then one step you might consider is to postpone identifying the immediate barriers, and consider the long term objectives. This is what Chris did to some extent with his response and the comparison to the laptop. Both shared interesting and valuable comments.

From my view, it seems like IBM’s current service strategy is to productize and standardize process driven solutions (ed. note: please refer to this post). This makes good strategic sense for a variety of reasons; the most important being scale and overhead costs. Assuming those constraints don’t radically change in the next 5 years, where would we want the supercomputing program to be then? Read the rest of this entry »

Context: this post is part of a thread about IBM’s potential role in both setting a positive example for change, AND helping companies enable change. An IBM’er raised the compelling thought that perhaps the enabling needing to only come after IBM had demonstrated significant progress internally. In some ways, IBM has been leading change, as evidenced by their key role in World Resource Institute’s Green Power Market Development Group. That participation earned IBM a place on the US EPA’s Top 25 Green Power Partners list.

Sounds like a great program. I’m curious to know what the incentives were for IBM to participate in that Green Energy group. Any ideas?

Could those same incentives be built upon to engage IBM in a similar group in the carbon credit market?

That would potentially be another high impact move to position IBM as both a leader AND an enabler.

[tags]IBM, Innovation Jam, WRI GPMDG , US EPA GPP Top 25[/tags]

Context: In this earlier post I concluded with a statement about existing accounting frameworks that could help IBM and their clients to measure triple bottom line impact. One of the IBM’ers asked for more resources. I’m not an expert on triple bottom line issues. Please post other resources here in the comments area. Thanks!

GRI is a major international accounting standards initiative, and they’ve been involved with many major organizations. That’s the best place to start.

There are some competing methodologies, and not a lot of debate about which is best, because ultimately the social science doesn’t exist to assign empirical value to human values. I should stick to listing resources, but as an aside, it seems clear that we need something like the GRI, right or wrong; standards will promote increasingly regular practices, and over time these practices will evolve into more sophisticated standards. That’s my personal view. Others are much more engaged in this space than I am.

John Elkington is a leader in the field, and he’s written an influential book titled “Cannibals with Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business”. He is also a professional consultant, and has co-founded a group called SustainAbility.

One of the interesting and innovative people working on the quantification challenge is a woman named Sara Olsen. She has founded the Social Venture Technology Group to help prospective investors evaluate Social Return On Investment (SROI).

A group with well established measurement methods is REDF. Their work seems to build on benefit-cost analysis methods as practiced in the development community.

Redefining Progress is perhaps best known for the ecological footprint concept. Personally I’m not a huge fan of that narrative, but I respect their success in capturing people’s attention. I am a big fan for their Genuine Progress Indicator as a more informative alternative to GDP, but I don’t suspect business leaders are quite ready for that yet. Regardless, Redefining Progress has done a lot of work with economists in the area of sustainability metrics.

[tags]IBM, Innovation Jam, sustainability metrics, triple bottom line[/tags]

Context: this post appears in a thread about specific energy initiatives that IBM could consider to begin building a consulting practice around energy efficiency and resource risk management. One of the previous posts mentioned the importance of a solid financial business case to justify these types of services. A separate post referenced IBM’s recent acquisition of MRO, and how that fact could play into management’s improved capacity to deal with rising resource expenses (my interpretation).

The acquisition of MRO is very relevant to this discussion. Thanks for bringing it up.

Supply chain risk management is one of the core business case value propositions in any sustainable management initiative. Home Depot was a pioneer in this regard with their tough experience in the redwood business. I believe this experience led directly to their relationship with the FSC people. As a result, millions of Americans have been educated about the advantages of more sustainable forestry practices.

Supply chain risk management is also relevant for other resources, such as water and energy. The organizations that demonstrate vision in these areas are bound to be better equipped to manage or possibly avoid some types of disruptive events. Consider the Cleveland/Detroit blackout of a couple years back. A company with an agressive renewable energy generation program, coupled with proactive efficiency measures, would likely have saved a lot of lost productivity during that event.

As mentioned above, these types of initiatives should be measured in terms of their impact on the bottom line. But to some extent that impact needs to be approached with an eye on precautionary risk management. It’s not enough to say that a solar panel’s return is limited to the displaced grid spend. The solar panel’s return is part of a comprehensive set of financial, environmental, and social returns to the business.

Fortunately there are already accounting frameworks that would allow IBM and your clients to demonstrate, estimate, and evaluate the environmental and social returns.[tags]IBM, Innovation Jam, sustainable supply chains[/tags]

Context: This post is in a thread where an IBM’er had suggested using cogeneration techniques to make productive use of waste heat in data server farms.

I think you’re referring to co-generation? It’s an interesting approach that’s been successful in commercial buildings that have large gas powered hot water heaters for example. The excess heat energy from the boiler is harnessed to drive electric generators.

Capturing the heat from a boiler seems physically manageable… I wonder how the heat from multiple server banks could be channelled.

The world of passive solar building designs might offer some solutions to this challenge. Some such buildings use ingenious air circulation systems that are driven primarily by the tendency of hot air to rise. Perhaps such an approach would be effective in a large server farm.

To take it a step further, I wonder if it would make sense to lower the ambient temperature of the server farm? I’ve been imagining large scale subterranean server farms that are superinsulated at ground level, with a highly engineered heat exchange and ventilation system above ground.

[tags]IBM, Innovation Jam, Cogeneration[/tags]

Context: This post originally appeared in an IBM Innovation Jam threaded discussion about what kind of partner ecosystem IBM might want to develop if they were to enter the sustainable management consulting industry. I’ll update the post below if anyone in the jam posts an interesting reply.

1.) The Natural Step
2.) Business for Social Responsibility
3.) Natural Logic
4.) Natural Capitalism, Inc.
5.) McDonough & Braungart

What I know about these organizations through limited personal contact is that they have a very difficult time selling “eco-efficiency”. Corporate clients have been reluctant to invest in the relatively low risk yields that stem from identifing and reducing system waste (energy, water, all resources). The consultants have had better success selling eco-innovation.

What exactly does this mean? Read the rest of this entry »

Phase 2 of the jam started today. I’ll be participating as time allows. On the negative side, they still haven’t been able to list Plan Resonate as a participant. This is unfortunate and I am discouraged when I see my posts attributed to Jeffrey Osborne, company: “Other”.

I do not work for “Other”. I work for Plan Resonate. You’ve come to the right place for more information about Plan Resonate.

On the indifferent side, I’ve decided to cross post all my innovation jam responses here. I say indifferent because it’s a drag only getting to share one side of the conversation. I’ll try to accomodate by excerpting small bits of context where it seems appropriate. If I’m contacted by big legal, I’ll let you know.

Another interesting change to the jam phase 2 is that they’re now using a wiki. This is an innovative step and should result in some positive results. The wiki is structured to parallel the jam’s four main topic areas, and each subcategory of those areas has an area for documenting a business plan and scenario planning. Read the rest of this entry »

IBM has been organizing these jam things for the past couple years. I’m participating in this year’s global innovation jam, and it’s been an interesting experience so far.

My first reaction was similar to a comment I saw on Digg. If IBM wants my innovative ideas, they can pay for them. Just like any other client. No – they’re not just any other client… they’re IBM! They can damn well afford it.

I reflected on this and realized that maybe I was missing the point (my reader will confirm that sometimes I do). I’ve told several clients in the past that ideas are free. Ideas should be free. Yes, if you hire me you’ll get more exposure to my ideas, and I’ll be billing you with the understanding that my ideas generate value for your business. But ultimately selling ideas is not my business. I like it when ideas are open and free.

That was my second reaction; I like free ideas, so I should be generous and share my ideas with IBM.

My third reaction was to assemble a team of market minded eco-freaks and to storm IBM’s happy chat with a left wing agenda. I went so far as to email some of my more radical business friends, and we shared an email or two about how we might make an impact. It’d be a great accomplishment to influence IBM to think differently about their role in the world, right? Well, turns out that was a pretty serious misconsception too.

Fortunately I decided to skip any disruptive organizing and just login and give the jam some honest participation. If they want to hang out, smoke herbs, and sing old dead tunes, I can roll with that. And you know, the early results haven’t been that amazing. They haven’t been bad either. Not a single djembe in the house. Read the rest of this entry »

That title is a hacked up version of an expression that I first heard from Hunter Lovins. It’s also a great description for a tendency among some types of fundamentalist groups whenever they get upset. It’s hard to find value in the behavior, and it happens all the time. I guess it’s just a pattern.

I drifted carelessly into the world of political environmentalist blogs yesterday. I’m sure everyone involved in that scene is committed to making positive change happen. They’re enthusiastic and sincere individuals. They’re most likely underpaid for the amount of work they do. They’re respectable and intelligent people. Like all of us, they sometimes make mistakes.

John Sellers and Barbara Dudley owe Adam Werbach an apology for their recent attacks.

“Whenever environmentalists help Wal-Mart score easy “corporate responsibility” points in The New York Times, they set back the efforts of working people in their battle with Wal-Mart, and simply reinforce the flaws of the old environmentalism which Werbach and others declared dead over a year ago.”

Pat Joseph at the Sierra Club Compass also owes Adam Werbach an apology. He wrote:

“(Think about it: How many people even know his [Werbach's] name?)”

Their personal attacks are not aimed at Wal*Mart. Their comments are aimed at an individual and they cast doubt on his credibility and integrity. Why?

Adam and his family live in my neighborhood in San Francisco. He’s an active entrepreneur, public servant of the city, and he even participates in organizing at the local level. He has a long history of public accomplishments. He doesn’t merit this type of criticism. It’s unjustified and possibly mean spirited.

I don’t know Sellers or Dudley or Joseph. I don’t know Adam personally either.

Sellers, Dudley, and Joseph no doubt feel justified in their statements. I don’t fault them for voicing strong opinions. In this case they were mistaken and they should publicly acknowledge their mistake.