Real Time Collaboration

We are currently working with a leading technology company in Silicon Valley which has consistently been ranked among the top innovators in the US for over a decade. They recently implemented video conferencing and telepresence systems to increase real time collaboration and reduce their carbon footprint by cutting down on travel and office space. We were engaged to increase user adoption and to design and implement ways to streamline the business processes for real time collaboration.

We are using our methodology to deliver the following to our client:

Voice of customer (VOC) surveys to assess attitudes toward real-time meetings and technologies,
“As-Is” and “To-Be” business process models of real time collaboration,
Training materials for education of super users as well as other employees, and
A marketing campaign to increase awareness of real-time telepresence and conferencing benefits.

Early results show that the benefits go significantly beyond reduced travel and carbon footprint. They enable the globally distributed collaborative organization of the future.

Our Framework for Eco-Innovation

We have developed a detailed methodology for creating the right mindset for innovation among executives, managers and employees. The framework enables an enterprise to systematically increase its level of maturity in leveraging sustainability for innovation and business advantage.

By implementing this methodology, a business can rapidly accelerate its efforts at becoming a low carbon enterprise. Through our workshops and other services, we enable executives and managers to move up the eco-innovation maturity scale and design and implement the new business models and next practices needed to succeed.

Our framework is described in “Why Sustainability is Now the Key Driver of Innovation,” the cover article in the September 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review, where Dr. Ram Nidumolu is the lead author.

Mindsets

The low carbon enterprise (LCE) has an entirely different mindset toward the environment and resources such as energy, carbon and water than the traditional enterprise. This mindset is based on the belief that:

The enterprises that “get it” will be the ones that will succeed in the emerging low carbon economy,
The environment is a great opportunity for reducing waste, increasing efficiencies, enabling cost savings, increasing revenues, gaining market share and improving competitive advantage, and
When managers conduct their day-to-day activities with this mindset, the enterprise becomes a seeding ground for innovative ideas, strategies and execution.

When this mindset becomes part of the DNA of the business, the enterprise has set the stage for leadership in the emerging low carbon economy.

LCE Best Practices among the Global 500 Corporations
Over the past two years, we studied dozens of Fortune Global 500 and other large enterprises who were members of the Corporate Eco Forum (CEF) (www.corporateecoforum.com) and other organizations. The CEF is the leading forum in the world for corporate sustainability initiatives among the Fortune Global 500 corporations. Our goal was to understand how the leading innovators among the world’s largest companies were preparing for the emerging low carbon economy.

Our conclusion: The current economic crisis is similar to the collapse of the dot com economy a decade ago in many respects. During the dot com collapse, a set of companies such as Amazon, eBay and Google emerged from the debris that deeply understood the power of the Internet. A similar scenario is being played out this decade. The companies we studied closely understand the innovation opportunities created by the low carbon enterprise. They are well positioned to capitalize on the low-carbon and clean energy economy of the future.

We also created several reports regarding the best practices of the leading Global 500 companies. Summaries of the reports can be accessed here:

We have created an extensive database that enables enterprises to benchmark their eco-innovation efforts against the self-assessments of twenty five of these leading innovators in the world.