Net Zero Emissions: Innovate with purpose
I have been mulling over this question: is there an important difference between innovation, and innovation with a specific purpose in mind?
For example, does the goal to “innovate to net zero emissions”, require a different approach to innovation more generally?
This was partly triggered by reflections on the David Senra Founders podcast I listened to recently on the joincolusses platform:
One of David’s key insights is how important the role of the individual is to the long term success of an enterprise, including the depth of motivation within that individual and the source of motivation.
This seems relevant to sustainability, given the disconnect we can observe in many people between their values and actions on sustainability.
Put another way, is innovation focused sustainability likely to be effective, without deepening the individuals connection to the cause first?
Kenneth Stanley’s Picbreeder experiments also got me thinking about this question:
His key insight is that goal directed innovation is problematic, if not doomed to fail, where reaching the goal requires creating a solution fundamentally new.
That is, redesign of a product/service/system (a complex goal) is likely to require a fundamentally different approach, compared to incremental improvements of a product/service/system
And yet in the transition to net zero, an organisation has to straddle both worlds - how do they maintain excellence and continuous improvement in core business, while exploring more complex innovation pathways?
Reflecting on the above and 15 years at the coal face, it strikes me that sustainability, and specifically the transition to net zero, needs outsized heavy lifting from individuals within teams and organisations. But where does their motivation come from, and how can it be cultivated or even deepened?
With this in mind, I’ve been exploring the potential for small group offsites - a way of getting individuals and/or small teams together, with a mix of unstructured and curated experiences, that help deepen understanding of:
self - why am I here?
other - what do they see that I don’t?
context - how do I become most effective in the world around me?