Archive for Conferences
Interviewing Irial Finan of Coca-Cola
Posted by: | Comments
Irial Finan of Coca-Cola
We’ll be talking about sustainability: How do you meet the mandate for significant business growth while also reducing its carbon footprint? Supply chain: What are the most vexing challenges of running one of the world’s most global and complex supply chains (the company has more than 300 bottling partners worldwide) given resource scarcity, price volatility, and local market expectations? And leadership: What qualities are most important for a leader in an high visibility, international organization like Coca-Cola today — and in 10 years time?
I find Coca-Cola to be an interesting company as they have embraced end-to-end life cycle responsibility for their product. They also operate locally through their bottlers around the globe and have one of the most diverse management teams I’ve come across; they may be headquartered in Atlanta but they are truly global. We’ll have a lot to talk about.
What questions would you like me to pose to Irial? I’ll be writing a summary of our conversation upon my return.
Public and Private Roles in Sustainability
Posted by: | Comments
Introducing Rep. Markey
I had the pleasure of introducing Rep. Edward Markey for his opening keynote at the recent Executive Council Sustainable Cities leadership forum. Markey has been at the forefront of the Congressional response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, is the co-author of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill, and author of the bill that increased auto mileage standards for the first time in three decades. The League of Conservation Voters calls him the environment’s best advocate in Congress.
Markey gave a fiery address about the need for the U.S. to become the leader in alternative energy. What I found interesting was his view that regulation can be a catalyst to those efforts. While many business leaders think that regulation in anathema to innovation, Markey disagrees. He pointed to his prior work on the Telecommunications Committee that shifted a segment of the broadcast spectrum into commercial use for cellular and other wireless communications. Without that regulatory move, the cell phone and broadband revolutions would have been greatly slowed or might never have happened at all.
The lesson is that the private and public sectors can be catalysts for each other. The private
- Markety advocates for clean energy
sector organizations pushing for adoption of a carbon cost bill (either a carbon tax or cap-and-trade) are hoping that it will spur another revolution. They are also, to be honest, hoping to seek regulatory advantage by getting a bill that aligns with their competitive position. Public players have their own interests, too. They are hoping to get jobs created in their districts, contributions from companies that do well as a result of the legislation, and have something to point to as accomplishment in the next election cycle.
These self-interests can, however, become enlarged interests that can have an impact far greater than the sum of the interests of the parties. Sustainability is a system-wide challenge that effects all sectors of society and will require efforts across all of those sectors. Climate change does not respect national borders nor is it particular about the tax status or brand image of the entities on which it has impact. Our response must be equally broad in its view and intention. Sustainability professionals and advocates must have great peripheral vision.
Legislators must keep citizens’ interests first and foremost and there are times when Congress needs to give both businesses and regulatory agencies a whack in the back of the head (see: oil spill, Deepwater Horizon). But at other times they must give the free market a nudge to get nascent industries off the ground. They shouldn’t micromanage but they can open macro possibilities.
I found Markey’s message to be hopeful and constructive in that it spurred my thinking on how public and private leaders can be complementary as well as adversarial. Each has a role to play in the sustainbility revolution and each can spur the others toward productive action.
Sustainable Cities: Taking a Broader View
Posted by: | CommentsSecond in a series on the Executive Council’s Sustainable Cities leadership forum.
One of the more intriguing themes that coursed through the dialogue at the Sustainable Cities forum was the importance of a holistic view of corporate impact. IBM, the event’s co-host promotes such a perspective through its Smarter Planet and Sustainable Cities work. Rich Lechner, IBM’s Vice President of Energy & Environment, spoke with Fortune’s Brian Dumaine about the infrastructure challenges ahead for electric vehicles. The cars themselves are simply the beginning and any solution must incorporate myriad considerations for recharging, battery exchange and disposal, and other issues that will involve auto manufacturers, utilities, city planners, and many others. IBM is embracing the complexity as the first step to simplifying the solution.
He also spoke about the famous example of UPS eliminating as many left hand turns as possible for its drivers. Yes, the move saves fuel and time — but it also improves public safety as left-hand turns result in more accidents than do right- hand turns. Public safety is a critical component of a sustainable city and not one that should be relegated solely to law enforcement or public health officials.
Scott Vitters (Coca-Cola) and Harry West (Continuum) also addressed the broad view during the Sustainable by Design panel. Vitters noted that Coca-Cola believes that its accountability goes from the acquiring the raw materials for its products through the fate of its containers after use. Vitters’ charge is packaging and he explained that the company is engaged in everything from developing bio-plastics to the recovery of used cans and bottles.
West, CEO of the design firm Continuum, offered the example of the Preserve toothbrush, a product his firm helped design. The toothbrush is made from recycled yogurt containers and other #5 plastics which saves significant amounts of water and energy when compared to virgin polypropylene. Its package is also a postage-paid return envelope that lets the brusher easily return the used toothbrush for recycling.
“Preserve doesn’t just help consumers think differently about toothbrushes,” West said. “It helps them see new possibilities in all products and product life cycles.”
In the afternoon, Relina Bulchandani of Cisco spoke about an “ERP (enterprise resource planning system) for a city,” which expressed the idea of enabling transparency and usability for the vast reservoirs of data being generated in cities. Cisco’s work with client companies involves improving decision-making by improving data flow and unlocking discreet pockets of data that might exist in a single department so that a broader number of users can benefit from them. A city is like this only with more players and more fixed boundaries between entities as some data exists with public sector agencies and some with utilities and other private sector organizations. Bulchandani, participating on the Data-driven City panel, discussed the importance of bringing all of this data together to optimize system performance, minimize environmental impact, and maximize benefits to citizens.
Each of these perspectives was distinct yet, refreshingly, acknowledged that for cities to be sustainable, organizations and individuals must think and act across a broader purview that takes externalities and full life-cycle impact into consideration.
The Sustainable City Circa 2040
Posted by: | Comments
The first in a series.
Jonathan F.P. Rose, founder of the green real estate and development Jonathan Rose Companies, delivered an inspirational capstone address at the Executive Council Sustainable Cities leadership forum earlier this week. I served as editorial director for the event.
Rose asked participants to close their eyes and imagine the city they’d like to live in in 2040. A few minutes later, people reported back what they’d “seen”: green space, children playing unsupervised, transportation that was accessible but not intrusive, successful locally owned businesses, a short distance between work and home (“No one ever visualizes a long commute,” Rose quipped when hearing that last contribution.).
What was interesting was that though the participants came from different industries and geographies, their sustainable urban ideals were remarkably similar. They were human scale and community oriented. Read More→
Getting Ready for Sustainable Cities
Posted by: | Comments
New York is Going Green
I’m serving as editorial director and moderator of the upcoming Executive Council Sustainability Leadership Forum – Sustainable Cities: Smarter, Greener, and More Competitive. It has been an interesting event to put together as I’ve interviewed and recruited speakers from companies like Autodesk, Coca-Cola, IBM, Cisco, ARUP, and many others. I’ve learned a lot and look forward to a day of rich, robust discussion.
Amanda Crater, founder of CraterCom, recently interviewed me for apodcast preview of the event: Eric McNulty-Sustainable Cities.
Executives from these large companies all have highly polished stories to tell. Their firms are doing good work and the impact that can be had at the scale at which they operate is significant. My editorial challenge, of course, is to puncture the polish. Not to play “gotcha” but to be sure that the audience gets the insights it needs.
I’m working on my queries: What will the long-term implications of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill be for business in general — not just the extractive industries? Must the cities of the developed world go “brown” before they go “green”? What sustainability opportunities with short payback windows are businesses overlooking?
What are the questions you’d most like me to ask of these executives?
