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Sustainability Driving Innovation/Innovation

Driving Sustainability
Lisa Friedman, Ph.D.
Enterprise Development Group, Palo Alto, CA
And IJIS Co-Editor

WHY SUSTAINABILITY?
We are living in transformational times.
Innovation can occur at different scales, with different size and scope. Sometimes only one product
or service changes, and while it is wonderful in itself, it doesn’t drive change in everything around it.
However there are times when one innovation ripples out to permeate many other products and
services. Sometimes change is even more pervasive. Sometimes deep change occurs that affects how
we see our world and this change begins to work its way into everything we create.
The classic diagram of Business Lifecycle Curves can help to illustrate this point (See Figure 1 below).
At the simplest level, the lifecycle curves can apply to a product or service. The first curve dips down as
the product requires initial investment before it “rounds the curve” and begins slow growth. If the product
is successful in its marketplace, it enters a phase of rapid growth. Over time, as the product matures, its
growth may begin to slow, plateau, and even decline. While a product may disappear altogether, there is
also the chance that it will be re-invented and transformed in a whole new form. Think of the horse and
carriage giving way to cars. The core product was still transportation, but it was delivered in a new form.

Figure 1. Business Lifecycle Curves

This same kind of shift can take place in an industry as a whole, where every business within that
industry feels the impact. The internal combustion engine led to cars, motorcycles, trains, ships and
airplanes. The transportation industry as a whole was redefined.
At unique moments, an even deeper shift occurs that affects all industries at once — a shift in eras.
Think of the agricultural era giving way to the industrial era. Industry after industry was transformed
at once, in parallel.
Today, we are living at the cusp of another important shift in eras. The world is moving from the
Industrial Era to an era of sustainability. Imagine the curves in Figure 1 above as representing this shift.
The first curve represents the first Industrial Revolution and the second curve does not yet have an
official name. William McDonough, Amory Lovins, Hunter Lovins, and others have called the second
curve “The Next Industrial Era,” while other sustainability pioneers call for a name that moves beyond
simply being the “Next” version of what came before. Paul Hawken proposed “The Restorative Era”
and many simply think of it as the Era of Sustainability.
Regardless of its name, the driving force between the first curve and the second is the recognition
that human economy is a subset of the larger natural economy on a living planet. All of our
businesses and organizations exist within the context of a larger, interconnected, interdependent,
living system. We don’t get to choose whether this is true. We simply get to decide whether our
human-created businesses and organizations align well with this larger system that in turn supports
all life on our planet.

Volume 3 · Number 1 · 2011

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