Recently the World Wildlife Fund has developed a number of papers on ICT and it's impact on the environment. HP joined WWF on a couple of these initiatives including the development of the Sustainable Innovation Zone (SIZ), which HP actually launched internal to their own organisation in September 2007.
Initially SIZ, a web based tool, allowed HP employees to participate in ideas generation on how ICT can reduce carbon emissions. However the expanded program will enable HP's customers to participate by providing their own carbon reduction services and have these published and linked on the website. In this respect the website will become what WWF calls a "virtual marketplace", linking the idea generators with commercial entities able to develop upon those ideas, and providing outreach to a customer base at the same time.
The SIZ has 6 key criteria used for idea definition:
- Who would be the primary implementor of the idea? Would would the idea need extra support? e.g. legislation, infrastructure, standards
- Who is the main target audience for the idea?
- Is the technology ready for the market?
- How mature is the market for the idea?
- What type of impact would your idea address? e.g. direct effect, indirect effect, systematic effect
Overall a simple but effective set of criteria from which it is easy to categorise and filter the ideas. And WWF contributes to the standalone site, providing material and content coordination.
Using this type of approach has more benefits than just providing business innovation - as others in different industries have found with similar initiatives.
As an example, Toyota is well known for its internal ideas system, from which it generated hundreds of thousands of ideas annually from it's employees. One of the benefits from an ideas system is improvement in products and Toyota achieved this to the extent that they are now one of the world's leading automotive manufacturers. However what is interestin about the Toyota process is the way in which they undertook the resulting projects: the person who suggested the idea participated from start to finish in the implementation of that it - resulting in high employee morale, and a sense of ownership and pride in the business.
Much the same approach is being applied to the HP/WWF model, however this time the key involvement comes not only from internal employees at HP, but a worldwide customer and partner base. It will certainly be interesting to see how this program develops, and how well it manages to engage consumers and businesses alike in what could become one of the biggest ICT carbon reduction initiatives worldwide.
References:
- World Wildlife Fund 2008, http://www.panda.org/news_facts/publications/ict/index.cfm
- Yuzo Yasudo 1990, 40 years, 20 million ideas, Productivity Press
