Articles

There’s an alarmist view of sustainable design that tilts toward the all-or-nothing. But it’s not the best path, says new-product design expert Steven Eppinger. When it comes to the practice of what Eppinger calls “design for environment,” he rejects the radical and argues for the incremental. For one thing, allor- nothing isn’t an approach businesses are especially good at; it takes too long, and fails too often. For another, the sum of continuous incrementalism is likely, he says, to carry designs further toward the no-impact outcomes everyone desires. Plus, there’s a method to it. It can be learned. The secret is to focus on materials. In this MIT SMR Sustainability Interview, Eppinger addresses the question of how environmental concerns can drive product design and innovation. Among his main points: 1) Design and product innovation for environmental sustainability should be framed as a materials problem; 2) How much material is used is less important than what material is used; 3) Don’t try to eliminate environmental impacts all at once. Try to get a little better each time you design any product.

The authors make the case that a shift in risk management approaches is needed.

There are five steps managers can take to protect their complex and vulnerable supply chains.

MIT Sloan's Andrew Lo on the importance of analyzing the uncertainty levels of a business.

Too many companies do not effectively target growing ethnic and immigrant markets within the U.S.

Once managers grasp the patterns of employee interactions, they can reduce network inefficiencies.

Are your customers in a concrete or abstract mindset as they think about purchasing your product? The answer can affect how much they buy.

What's smarter: To charge separately for extras -- or to combine all charges into one total price?

Some companies have discovered that a commitment to tackling societal problems can lead to high performance and profits. It can help strengthen a company in the eyes of its customer base, its employee base and the general public. Technology has made information about a company's behavior anywhere in the world more readily available. If companies take a proactive approach, they can turn this increased consumer awareness into a benefit. Rosabeth Moss Kanter explores how companies like Proctor & Gamble, Starbucks and Diageo thought about societal benefits and created new products to support them.

In an interview that is part of SMR’s ongoing series on the business of sustainability, MIT’s Ernest Moniz, the director of the MIT Energy Initiative, explains why blending big-company culture with entrepreneurial innovation is the challenge that leaders must learn to meet. According to Moniz, large energy companies are the ones that have the capacity in terms of resources to scale up new technologies to impact climate change in a relatively short period of time. But to do so they need to be both “big and nimble.” “The number one overarching issue, which does pose business opportunity, business risk, and a need to rethink business models, is carbon constraints,” says Moniz. “As you know, 85 percent of our energy is fossil fuel. Fossil fuel equals carbon. Controlling carbon goes to the very core of the way we currently supply energy.” There are multiple strategies for dealing with innovation in a carbon-constrained world, including mergers and acquisitions, and investments in research. But the innovation culture is not natural to energy companies; until now they have been rewarded for reliability, not innovation. Cultivating an open mind, dealing with uncertainty, and balancing competing requirements necessary for innovation ultimately comes down to the judgment of senior executives.