mission, vision, goals, or offerings. They must be content dealing with the results of these decisions at the implementation (or tactical) level and design the best solution they can that fits the already-specified parameters. Instead, designers should seek to involve themselves in the strategic discussions that determine not only what the offerings’ parameters are but what to offer the market in the first place. This is where designers can have the most impact. (More discussion of this is in Chapter 16, “Innovating Solutions.”)
Financial Vitality
For sure, innovative solutions, no matter how sustainable, can’t be effective if they aren’t financially viable. While designers, traditionally, eschew these considerations or assume others are “on top of them,” this further disempowers their work. Currently, the economy is stacked against sustainable solutions because it doesn’t recognize or value the true cost (that which totals social and environmental costs in addition to financial costs) of the products and services that are created, deployed, and disposed of. This makes it even more difficult to design in a sustainable fashion. However, those designers who understand the mechanisms that support or challenge the products and services they develop, will find more opportunities to have innovative ways of solving challenges at all levels of sustainability (environmental and social as well).
Currently, the economy is stacked against sustainable solutions because it doesn’t recognize or value the true cost (that which totals social and environmental costs in addition to financial costs) of the products and services that are created, deployed, and disposed of.
As I said earlier in this chapter, at the heart of sustainability is efficiency, and this always makes economic sense. Designers who reduce the amount of energy or materials in their solutions are inherently making more sustainably—financially—viable results. In this way, we can often take on more challenges across the array of sustainable issues and still deliver financially attractive answers.
But financial viability means more than just a better bottom line. As we’ve seen recently in the global financial markets of fall 2008, lack of transparency and accountability can create whole financial systems that aren’t real, sustainable, or viable. The basics of supply and demand, credits and debits, loans and savings weren’t at issue here (although even these have their problems). Instead, a shadow world of unaccountable value was created and then allowed to grow unsustainably until the entire house of cards came crashing down. In the wake, the good investments and value suffers along with the bad. This, too, is a lack of sustainable design. Those who developed these mechanisms didn’t have a systems perspective, lacked ethics and accountability, and developed a system that wasn’t healthy for any system, let alone the financial system itself. This is what can happen when sustainability isn’t part of the criteria in a design and development process.
… financial viability means more than just a better bottom line. As we’ve seen recently in the global financial markets, lack of transparency and accountability can create whole financial systems that aren’t real, sustainable, or viable.
An Ecosystem of Stakeholders
While we’ve traditionally considered the important players in the development process to be the client (or company) and the customer, these are not the only two actors to consider. The design industry has recently started to recognize the importance of deep customer understanding (often called design or user research) in the development of successful solutions. However, from a systems perspective, there are other stakeholders to be aware of as well.
Traditional approaches to business define shareholders as the only population to consider when making business decisions. More enlightened approaches to business include other groups, such as employees and customers. The most effective organizations, however, have learned to consider input, needs, and cooperation with suppliers, distributors, retailers, and other business partners throughout the supply chain. You can see where this is going. The more systems-oriented you are and the more you consider the full spectrum of sustainable issues (managing and using human, natural, and financial capital), the wider the circle of concerns, issues, and actors to involve. These are all called stakeholders and can include, in addition to those named above, any of the following: creditors, communities, government courts and departments (city, state, federal, and international), banks, media, institutional investors and fund managers, labor unions, insurers and re-insurers, NGOs, media, business groups, trade associations, competitors, the general public, and the environment itself (local, regional, and global).
Stakeholders can have all sorts of impact and exert considerable influence in remarkable ways.
Of course, no company or designer can include all of these stakeholders in all of its decisions, nor would this be appropriate. But, often, a particular stakeholder group can exert unexpected and significant power on a company due to its behavior and offerings. (Think of citizen action groups thwarting plans for a new dump in their neighborhood.) Stakeholders can have all sorts of impact and exert considerable influence in remarkable ways. They can form coalitions with each other to increase their influence, like when one labor union joins with another or when an NGO teams up with a trade association. While most of these stakeholders don’t have direct corporate influence (such as voting on corporate decisions), they can exercise their power via the courts, government lobbying, economic activities, and social activities, such as boycotts, protests, and creating awareness in the media and public.
Smart companies keep an eye on as many stakeholders and their concerns as possible and manage company activities and policy accordingly to reduce the need to respond to unexpected stakeholder involvement. Designers, too, need to be aware of the range of stakeholders and their concerns if they hope to create sustainable solutions that improve conditions across environmental, social, and financial challenges.
A Careful Balance
Lastly, no decision is perfect or comes without consequences. Design requires decisions that narrow possibilities, ultimately until there is one solution. Designing more sustainable offerings may require you to balance inputs and outcomes and, often, compromise. It’s rare, in fact, that you’ll achieve everything that you want.
For example, some recycled materials have lower strength, higher weight, or less perfect consistency. This may require your product to have thicker construction or lower tolerances. Parts may need to be larger or heavier. These outcomes may be the result of necessary dematerialization or sourcing materials from a source with better environmental or social behavior. Other factors may require you to choose between a longer or shorter product life, increased or decreased carbon footprint or recyclability, or less efficient energy use. Mobile products, especially, might cause you to choose more expensive, lighter, and more durable materials since these products need to be as small, light, and robust as possible, or they don’t get purchased. But these may also limit longevity or recyclability. In addition, more sustainable materials may be more expensive than less sustainable ones, driving up the total product cost.
Designing more sustainable offerings may require you to balance inputs and outcomes and, often, compromise.
You may not be able to educate your customers enough for them to appreciate or expect your new approach or solution to compete with those they already know and trust. For this reason alone, an optimized solution, from a sustainability perspective, may not be successful. Getting too far
in front of customers or the market can be more disastrous than being too far behind (since it often results in disastrous sales and failure of products, services, and companies).
As I wrote in the “Introduction,” there’s
