Workshop details:

Date:
Thursday, October 15, 2009
9:00AM – 5:00PM

Place:
Forefront Conference Center
404 Wyman Street Waltham, MA
http://www.forefrontcenter.com/

Cost:
$395 per person, light breakfast and buffet luncheon included
Student rate available

Register at:
http://sustainableinnovation.eventbrite.com/
Registration deadline is Friday, October 9 at 12:00 Noon

Contact:
Asheen@QuakingAspenLLC.com

Bringing a product from concept to customer is an interdisciplinary process that involves a wide diversity of skills: designers’ creativity, engineers’ pragmatism, operations leaders’ effectiveness, marketers’ insight. So why would you use one-size-fits-all sustainability practices?

We’ve developed a Sustainable Innovation Workshop that provides clarity to where each sustainable innovation tool fits into your job and your company.

We will train you in the tools most useful at each stage of the innovation process. You’ve probably heard of some of these sustainable innovation tools, like carbon footprinting, life cycle assessment, and green marketing.

So if you’re a professional working in a design, technical, operations, strategy, or marketing role, and are interested in—or have been tasked with—infusing more sustainability into your job and career, attend our workshop to gain exposure to these tools of sustainable innovation. Keep reading to find out what you’ll learn.

More about the Sustainable Innovation Toolkit

Here is more detail about the Sustainable Innovation Toolkit you’ll be exposed to through our workshop:

Biomimicry

Biomimicry, or nature-inspired design, provides a practical, systematic framework used for the design of products and processes using inspiration from Nature. Its principles will also help you develop a sustainable product “gold standard” against which you can compare all future design ideas.

You will learn how to apply this framework during the design process. To really get your design team’s creative juices flowing, we also offer a half-day intensive biomimicry workshop.

Life Cycle Assessment

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is the practice of quantifying a product design’s ecological impact.

You will learn how to make simple tradeoffs to improve the ecological efficiency of your products, such as: do we manufacture with sustainable materials in China, or local nonrenewables? What is the impact of changing from materials? To learn more, we also offer an LCA workshop that will let you really dig into LCA methodology.

Green Chemistry

Is there a science to choosing—and inventing anew—materials along environmental considerations? You bet! Green chemistry “unleashes the creativity and innovation of our scientists and engineers in designing and discovering the next generation of chemicals and materials… [for] increased performance and increased value while meeting all goals to protect and enhance human health and the environment” (ACS Green Chem. Inst.).

You will learn how to develop a Material Preference List for existing materials, and will learn the Twelve Principles of Green Chemistry to evaluate new materials. If you need to delve more deeply into the green beaker, leverage our relationship with Dr. John Warner of the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry.

Sustainable Operations

It takes a sustainable company to make a truly sustainable product. Do you know where the major impacts of your company’s operations lie? Performing a greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory—the formal name for a carbon footprint—reveals the most impactful areas of your operations.

You will learn how to conduct a GHG inventory, and how to use the information gained from this inventory to improve your operations. We can also work with you further to reduce your company’s total GHG footprint.

Industrial Ecology

Industrial ecology refers to a high-level understanding of a business ecosystem, and what makes that ecosystem sustainable. This covers greening upstream in your supply chain and downstream in your products’ value chains.

You will learn about the finer distinctions of the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle hierarchy (like recycling vs. downcycling), and the positive and negative financial impacts of closed-loop (cradle-to-cradle) production.

Green Marketing

Green Marketing is the ability to tell the sustainability story of a product or service believably, to one or more market segments that will be incentivized to buy your offering based on its environmental effectiveness.

You will learn about market segmentation, targeting, and positioning for a green marketing campaign; laws and ethical practices in green advertising; and future trends to watch for, such as product-level carbon footprinting. Interested in learning more? We also offer—you guessed it—an in-depth, hands-on seminar in green marketing.

Your Workshop Facilitators

Read more about Asheen Phansey and Rudy Ruggles.

On the surface, it isn’t Burger King’s fault that some irresponsible lout chooses my lawn (or at present, my snowbanks) as his dumping site. But let’s read between the lines: the very fact that Burger King enables its customers to turn its products into everlasting debris speaks to the company’s lack of understanding of the greater societal ecosystem in which it operates.

You’ve seen that little note on the packaging that requests that you dispose of this properly, showing a responsible-looking stick figure throwing her neat, compact trash into a cavernously empty bin. This is nothing like reality; chances are the real trash bin is already bursting at the seams — as is its eventual landfill destination. There’s really no “away”, anyway, so all that trash ends up somewhere, whether it’s in my yard or on a trash barge bound for nowhere.

Corporate social responsibility is no longer just about installing compact fluorescents, buying carbon indulgences and recycling your company’s soda cans. It’s about developing the mindset that your company is an integral part of this world and all its chickens, dandelions, sand, polar bears, ocean currents, grasshoppers and rainy days. It’s about examining every point of interaction with the world and making certain that each interaction is meaningful — and, eventually, that each is restorative.

So what’s the solution to BK’s ubiquity of soon-useless packaging? Perhaps it’s using organic, compostable ware, like these beautiful Verterra plates that sustainability/social media consultant Paul Smith pointed out to me. Maybe it’s using reusable plates for eat-in customers, if comparably-priced options can be found.

The point is, adopting the mindset that your products’ sustainability is your responsibility is your brand will make all the difference in the world.