Just adapting our current way of doing things isn't going to get us there.
When it comes to the challenge of becoming more sustainable and meeting the ever-increasing green targets necessary for meaningful change, it is going to take innovation not just adaptation. What do I mean?
Think about the simplicity of the VW Beetle for a moment. A car for the masses, designed to be built simply and cheaply, to get people to where they need. Now imagine that you have been tasked with entering an endurance car race across Europe while using the least amount of fuel and producing the least emissions, in the shortest time? What do you do? Is the car you have suitable? What should you do? You are faced with 2 options here:
1. Adapt the car you already have
2. Go back to the drawing board and innovate.
The challenge to adapt a car like this is immense, The chassis would need to be stiffened, the steering changed, the engine completely upgraded, and the brakes would need to be replaced to name but a few things. It simply is not a case of changing the fuel type and coasting down the hill.
This is very similar to the challenge facing most manufacturing companies of all sizes today. Produce the same widget, but with less emission, in a faster time using less fuel. Merely trying to adapt our practices has a limit and ultimately becomes more costly than re innovating from scratch.
So what do we do with this challenge? Who do we reach out to?
The first place that requires innovation is in the way we think and the way our employees think about the challenge. We need to foster an innovative culture with a ‘Fail forward’ mentality that creates a safe place for experimentation. (there are lots of buzz words here which I will break down in articles to follow)
This culture needs to permeate all areas of the business, Operations, Finance, Sales & HR
The best and most creative ideas often come from within, through facilitated engagement, by presenting the challenge with fresh language and by fostering urgency around the challenge our workplaces can become seedbeds of innovative ideas.