Innovation Sweet Spot 2.0: Time to add a new factor — Sustainability

We are all living in a world, where technology is helping us in all aspects of life, Just take a deep breath and think about whether all these innovative tech products are helping us or harming us? The 2020 Netflix DocuDrama — “The Social Dilemma” seeded this thought in my head. It made me research and read more about it, In this article, I am just trying to review and revise the Popular Innovation sweet spot framework, by adding a new component into it.

First of all, what is this Innovation Sweet Spot?

Being a design thinker I was always fascinated by these three spheres and the intersection where innovation happens because I felt that’s the secret sauce of any innovative product, service or company. Successful innovation evolves at the right balance of these three aspects, Desirability, Feasibility and Viability. It is a proven model followed by all disrupting companies across the globe. This model is the basis of any design thinking framework, where the design thinker tries to answer the below question under each of these aspects.

Desirable

• Is the product/service/solution desirable?
• Is it rightly fitting into the customer’s needs and their lives?
• Is this what they were waiting for badly?
• Is this solving their right problem, or is it solving a problem which they didn’t know they had?

Feasible

• Are we able to implement this solution?
• Is this technically feasible?
• Do we have the capability to implement this solution?
• Is it feasible to build the solution within the given time and budget constraints?

Viable

• Is this solution profitable?
• What is the Customer Value You Provide?
• What are Your Revenue Sources?
• What Incentives Does Each Stakeholder Possess?
• Does the Solution Contribute to Long-Term Growth?
• What are the costs to develop and operate the solution?

Any Product Ideation team using a design thinking technique runs all their divergent ideas through these questions and arrive at a successful innovative solution. As there is a lot written and spoken about Sweet Spot and Design thinking, I am not going deeper. I feel this is a decent intro. In a nutshell

Someone wants it ! We can do it ! We should do it

This successful innovation framework has disrupted the way we live. Just a few numbers to show the power of innovation in the software tech industry. The successful numbers testify to their perfect balance of “Desirability”, “Feasibility” & “Viability”.

1. 3.5 billion social media users worldwide
2. Facebook has over 1.393 billion monthly active users
3. One billion daily active WhatsApp users
4. 890 million people log in to Facebook daily
5. Six in ten online adults have Instagram accounts
6. 3 hours are spent per day per person on social networks and messaging.
7. The average time spent on Facebook per user per day is 21 minutes.
8. Two billion minutes spent making WhatsApp voice and video calls per day.
9. Almost 5 billion videos are watched on Youtube every single day.
10. The average mobile viewing session lasts more than 40 minutes. This is up with more than 50% year-over-year

So now, everything looks good, so why change? I feel it’s time to evolve the innovation frameworks. Change is inevitable!

“What’s dangerous is not to evolve” — Jeff Bezoz

The other side of innovation!

1. 210 million people are estimated to suffer from internet & social media addictions.
2. Teens who spend 5 hours a day on their phones are 2x more likely to show depressive symptoms
3. Young, single females are addicted to social media more than any other group
4. 71% of people sleep with or next to their mobile phones.
5. 10% of teens check their phones more than 10x per night.
6. 50% of people driving while using a smartphone are checking social media
7. Generation Z spends the most time on social media (2 hours and 55 minutes per day).
8. 59% of parents have talked to their children because they were concerned about something posted on social media.
9. Google and Facebook run massive data centres and consume immense amounts of energy. AI and Voice-based tech needs more computing power
10. New structures around data privacy and accuracy have created even more demand for energy.

These numbers are casting some light on the other side of Success. Success KPIs of business are the count of real human beings who are spending his/her valuable time in front of a 6-inch device.

Last decade, the tech industry spoke about the hook model and growth model, which just focused on increasing returning users, monthly active users, watch hours etc. But now seeing the above numbers, the future looks a little dark if we continue this trend. The Docudrama by Netflix — “The Social Dilemma”, gives deeper insights into the situation. So it’s time to add one more sphere to the trifecta

Sustainability aspect to Innovation

It’s high time to think about adding a new aspect to the sweet spot of innovation, or rather it’s high time to redefine the true meaning of successful innovation for mankind. So what all new questions to be answered while adding this new aspect — “Sustainability”. We are in a time, we should no longer call it “sustainable innovation”. This is how Innovation should be. Sustainability should be in the basic fabric to consider something as innovative.

Sweet Spot of Innovation 2.0: Where Desirability, Feasibility, Viability and Sustainability is equally considered

If you look at it from the industry perspective, every industry evolves as time goes. The legacy industries like automobile, manufacturing, food have already factored in the sustainability element long back as they evolved. I strongly believe in the next decade, we will all see a similar evolution in the Software tech industry, by redefining the Innovation sweet spot. The intersection will equally consider the “Sustainability” factor along with all the three existing factors.

By factoring in human rights, social and environmental aspects, innovation can be made more helpful to the human race and this planet. Let’s hope for a future where products or ideas which lack sustainability factors should not be considered as live production fit.

Key Sustainability Factors :

Does my Innovation / Product / Solution have any negative physical or physiological impact both short term and long term, like

• Isolation
• Depression and anxiety
• Poor sleep quality
• Reduced physical activity
• lack of attention

Does my Innovation / Product / Solution have any negative social impact both short term and long term?

• Results in any negative social change
• Results in changing core positive values
• Results in increased crime and gambling
• Causes changes in moral behaviour
• Causes changes in family structure and roles;
• Results in Bullying
• Causes delay in social and emotional development

Does my Innovation / Product / Solution have any environmental impact both short term and long term?

• Deforestation
• Air Pollution
• Global Warming
• Water Pollution
• Natural Resource Depletion

Does this Innovation / Product / Solution respect the human rights of the user?

• The right to equality and freedom from discrimination
• The right to life, liberty, and personal security
• Freedom from torture and degrading treatment
• The right to equality before the law
• The right to a fair trial
• The right to privacy
• Freedom of belief and religion
• Freedom of opinion
• Right of peaceful assembly and association
• The right to social security
• The right to health

Challenges of adding sustainability

There is always inertia to change, same in this context as well. There is a chasm to cross to orient yourself to factor in Sustainability, Highlighting a few major barriers to sustainability

• Economic Barrier- The additional cost and financial burden
• Consumers not appreciating their worth. This is a major challenge, only when consumers are ready to shed the extra dollars, producers can shift to sustainability. It comes with a cost, but always profitable in the long run for humanity, not just in terms of dollars, beyond that
• Lacks ROI
• Evaluation Barrier: How to Measure, Monitor and Track Sustainability are limited and fragmented. A better way to monitor and demonstrate can bring in buy-in from management and society.
• Not the right time
• Social barrier

Future is Sustainability

Tech giants already started thinking about it to bring sustainability to the products

• Google’s digital wellbeing initiative is already a huge success, which believes technology should improve life, not distract from it
• Google targeting to become carbon neutral by 2030, read more — https://sustainability.google/
• Facebook and Instagram also joined the initiative of controlling social media addiction by informing the user about the time spent and setting limits.
• Apple has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2030.
• Amazon sustainability is focusing on sustainable supply chain

A lot of green startups and companies sprouting solving uses cases related to “Sustainability”.

• Companies like Trustrace, Chain Point, provide traceability as a service to make sure the supply chain is environment friendly and socially responsible.
• Facedrive — Uber-like riding app based in Canada, which promoted hybrid and electric cars
• Power ledger concepts

Combined forum and NGO are also working hard to make the technology industry sustainable.

• Theclimatepledge.com, more than 100 companies have taken a pledge to become carbon neutral by 2040.
• Center for Humane Technology — https://www.humanetech.com/ mission is to drive a comprehensive shift toward humane technology that supports the collective well-being, democracy and shared information environment.
• childsafenet: mission to make digital technology safer for children and young people.

How can you or I contribute to this change :

As part of this Software tech industry, every one of us can play our part in this evolution of adding Sustainability factors. Just sharing roles wise corrective steps each one of us can adopt

• CEO/ Founder/ Leaders: Can set sustainable goals at the organisational level
• Product Manager / Owner: Can think about better solutions for problems out there, which never exploits human weaknesses. Redefining your Product OKR and KPIs with sustainability factors as well.
• As a developer / Quality Engineer, you may prefer tech stacks that are efficient, consuming less server utilization, resulting in less energy consumption.
• As consumers of tech, try to prefer products/services which promote sustainability, which in turn drives businesses to provide more sustainable innovation.

Let’s do our small part, and make this planet a better place to live for our generation and coming generations by sustainable innovations