Green business ranges from sustainability to renewable energies to clean technologies and more. It's a big topic with huge implications for the world's future. Last spring Andrew Shapiro of Green Order, Lewis Perkins of Mohawk, and Innosight Chairman Mark Johnson participated in a panel discussion on “Green Business” as part of Forbes' Business Visionary series. This issue features a group interview of this panel in a further exploration of their thoughts on innovation in the green space. Here is an excerpt:
Strategy & Innovation: The current cultural change has begun to shape innovation efforts, new businesses, and so forth, which goes along with Innosight’s theory that constraints drive innovation by defining the box within which you need to innovate. The green mandates – sustainability, using clean energy, and trying to keep as small a footprint as possible, environmentally – how are those things driving innovation?
Mark Johnson: In Innosight’s language, we’d say that these constraints have the effect of creating new jobs-to-be-done related to sustainability: “Make my environmental footprint smaller,” for instance, or “Let me run my business profitably using clean energy.” Innovative technologies will be developed and adopted to fulfill those jobs, but only through equally innovative new business models.
In this issue, we also feature another article in our experimentation series, “Through the Looking Glass: Experimenting with the Future of IT,” by Kevin Bolen, who explores why technology companies should experiment as part of their innovation processes. Here is an excerpt:
“Please review the document in detail and sign if you are comfortable with the terms. Those who do not sign will not be permitted on the tour.” I received this greeting back in 2005 as I embarked on two separate visits to the future. At every pre-determined stop on our tours – one of Microsoft’s Home of the Future and the other at Deutsche Telekom’s Future Center – we were given a chance to hear a well-rehearsed description of an engineering marvel, and see and experience these wonders for ourselves. And not clunky prototypes scattered around a lab, either – we were interacting with products and form factors that looked ready to ship, all collocated in high-gloss environments designed to show us mere mortals what the engineering gods at these two technology powerhouses were preparing to bestow on us. Because I know those confidentiality agreements had no expiration date, I will not divulge in detail what I saw those days. Rather, I will share what I didn’t see, as I feel there are far greater lessons there.What I didn’t see on either tour was any type of experimentation.
From the Innoblog, Renee Hopkins reveals new advances in implantable device technology, silicon-silk electronics, in this issue’s emerging technology watch. Also, Andrew Laing analyzes Eventbrite’s potential for disruption in the online ticketing industry and Allen Stoddard discusses Google’s new, free navigation services and its effect on the industry.
