The business of being good: How tech can transform business into a force for good
In a previous article I explored why Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is no longer a ‘nice to have’ for businesses, but a fundamental part of how they are perceived by their customers, shareholders and the workforce. With increased demand for transparency and an increasingly socially aware customer base, how can an organisation leverage technology to up their game?
Technology’s growing role in Corporate Social Responsibility
Businesses wanting to take their corporate social responsibilities seriously should find that technology forms the backbone of their approach. The possibilities technology provides today are only a small glimpse of what’s to come. Clean energy advances alone have in recent years given us waste processing that generates zero emission energy, Elon Musk’s renewable energy storing batteries and windows that generate solar power. The news is full of exciting developments; the first solar powered plane journey around the globe, machines that generate water out of air, 3D printing, driverless cars, and drones being used to solve problems ranging from infant heart surgery to post conflict land mapping. With all this new tech coming to the mainstream, businesses have a whole new range of tools at their disposal.
There are three operational areas where business should look to technology to help provide positive innovation: optimising their internal and production processes; the design and lifecycle of their products and in the built environments they operate out of.
1. Process innovation
In a context of rich data and sophisticated communications capabilities, identifying problems is easier than ever. In addition to spotting the issues, technology is already offering practical solutions to help businesses to solve these problems at scale. The Guardian Ethical awards recently recognised an app produced by Innocent drinks to reduce their water waste, and an app to monitor restaurant food waste. Google recently cut 15% of its data centres energy use using AI. As organisations grow in confidence with technology we’ll see greater flexibility around internal processes and a greater sense of empowerment to positively disrupt the inefficient and unethical norms.
2. Product and lifecycle innovation
Outside of the production processes, products themselves are rife for improvement. It’s no secret that almost every product creates waste. From packaging through to disposal, the lifecycle of a physical product is almost always harmful to various degrees.
Recent years have seen a greater push for more sustainable manufacturing through recycling, measures to reduce packaging and improvements to other stages of product lifecycles. But even more exciting than recycling is the idea that a product could positively contribute to the environment at every stage of it’s lifecycle, even when it breaks down. Cradle to Cradle design gives us a framework for just this, challenging designers to build products that benefit the environment, society and the economy.
Rather than needing disposal, it argues, we can build products to usefully return to the ecosystem.
Existing products that have been awarded the Cradle to Cradle certification include carpets that are produced and 100% recycled without waste, and a biodegradable trainer by Puma. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which advocates for a circular economy, has been progressing this system of thinking considerably in recent years.
3. Real estate innovation
By 2018, Gartner predicts there will be over 1 billion IoT deployments in commercial real estate. With the advent of the Internet of Things, smart buildings and smart cities, everything from energy efficiency to quality of life has the potential to be positively affected.
Buildings play a huge role in the health and wellbeing of workers, and are increasingly part of the discussion around improving working culture. Designing offices and industrial spaces that could respond to the needs of workers is an exciting prospect, and examples of how IoT can increase safety and wellbeing are starting to appear.
In Singapore, a pioneer of the smart city, they are trialling a system which detects changes in the movements of elderly people in their homes — indicative of a fall or distress. The system then alerts caregivers and neighbours in real time. It’s easy to imagine how a better understanding of movement in a workplace could be used to optimise it for collaborative and social use. Issues around maintenance will also be much easier to preempt, and with real time surveillance the time needed to detect and report an emergency will be reduced to seconds.
When it comes to energy saving, commercial buildings are an obvious starting point, as they are currently responsible for approximately 20% of the UK’s greenhouse emissions. IoT data on things like temperature and movement can dramatically improve efficiency through automation — Google’s AI case study is already proving this can work.
Even better is the ambition to achieve net positive buildings, that generate more power than they need and can send excess back into the grid. We’re already seeing buildings built to harness renewables, like the wind farming Pertamina Energy Tower in Jakarta or the ‘walkie talkie’ in London (pictured), which is fitted with solar panels on the roof. As technology develops on-site renewables will be easier to support and to integrate into existing structures. Thermoelectric and photovoltaic paints may soon allow us to generate solar power through a ‘solar skin’ of paint, for example.
What businesses should do today
The road to becoming a truly ethical enterprise is a difficult one, with many complex challenges. To create a CSR programme worthy of the tech age a business must first create the internal conditions for innovation to thrive.
Design thinking teaches us that to be successful a business must constantly innovate, unafraid to reimagine its role and to reassess what differentiates it from competitors. In a context which shifts as quickly as ours, any organisation which has made itself flexible and forward thinking has also made itself robust. With the help of partnerships and buy-in expertise there is no excuse for businesses not to start facing this challenge immediately.
Ultimately, the rewards of undertaking a serious response to CSR will be far greater than the obstacles. The challenges of corporate social responsibility are also the great challenges of our times, and any enterprise with designs on the future will need to find a place in addressing them. Technology might be shifting the landscape and raising consumers’ expectations, but it is also opening up a world of opportunities for businesses to combat their ethical shortcomings. The time has come for businesses to reimagine themselves in a way never before possible; as a net positive force for good, and a means of leaving the world in a better place than we found it.
