A Sustainability Criteria from Scratch

Since I hail from an engineering and architectural experience focused BFA and a community development background, with socio-structural change, cultural and environmental sustainability courses glinting about my belt-buckle, I consider myself a fair judge of what sustainability is and how to qualify it. BUT, read on, and, judge my chops yourself, with …claps? …or… jump back to my intro article: 0. My little black box, an innovation education

In selection

I blindly evaluated four businesses in their static state according to a gut feeling and a projection of a world aggressively affected by sustainable principles as I understand them. If that world’s technology or behaviors would scuttle the business, those businesses were unsustainable. The sustainable businesses I chose were more resilient…humanity and purpose-driven enterprises that would not be phased out due to the success of sustainable development.

sustainable

1. LABCorp
2. Correction Corp of America (after research now DBA CORECivic)

unsustainable

1. Waste Management
2. Public Storage

In creation

Initially, my perception of where to start was aligned with analyzing systems of business models, like the circular economy, or the gifting business model (Toms). So… I began to route out from my conceptualized notion of sustainability some basic, but higher level categories of new human-centered business models.

I wrote three types:

• needs-based aligned with human survival
• equality-based observances of social orders and suppression structures
• time-based understandings of the need to transition or shift a manner of business in order to remain sustainable. Or, doing business to leave behind what will be a required vestige for other businesses

Businesses that fit into these categorical distinctions, that addressed the areas noted in my SWOT per model, (not shown) would be rated better. This was my first pass at building a criteria for sustainability, but it lacked structure and a numerical system.

In development

Having defined a new approach and peripheral understanding (and with a directive to return a better criteria by the next morning) I took the notes I sketched in the course of conversation, pictured below, and massaged them into the criteria building process.

I then defined sustainability. The definition below is of the same sentiment, though has undergone some renovation.

“ Being sustainable means achieving the greatest possible focal depth along cultural, environmental, and economic vectors, and bringing those depths of understanding to action in ways that empower your collaborators to join you in delivering equitable futures.”

My notes got back to the basics and honed in on a parametric framework. I started to define a structure on which metrics could act across businesses. I sketched the three vectors I had studied as important: economy, culture, and the environment then I pointed out leverage points that would mutate an organism object. The idea was to use a genetic algorithm called galapagos paired with an agent based modeling plugin for grasshopper + Rhino3D called Starling, to simulate a time-series of growth. The simulation would project lifecycles of sustainable evolution into an animation of a protozoan “animal.” The vision struck me as a super compelling mass communication tactic. Then, I imagined I could generate an undulating fabric or network of these animals fitting together, decision makers could query the landscape to identify possible aquistions or new sustainable collaborations that would compensate for their or another stakeholder’s shortcomings. I thought what a juicy business intelligence product service. And at the top of my idea, seeing it as so beautiful, I thought that this was much too complex a development path for this criteria, and frankly, far to computationally expensive to function smoothly for end users if developed to completion.

And in that flight of fancy, it also became wildly apparent that, in order to compare businesses across industries properly I would need to identify nearly all the possible leverage points along each vector and assign dynamic weights to various groupings of them, and that this would not be possible with the available resources (time) at hand.

Reducing the model

With that, it was about time to compile my intial reaction, the three abstract human-centered business types, with a less fantastic and, perhaps, a less anthropomorphic node and vector-based model. Simultaneously, I would need to build in flexibility that could preserve the frameworks ability to generalize across industry, and, then, also return a numerical output. I didn’t want this sustainability model customized for any one industry or even worse sub-optimized for in industry segments like LEED had done with environmental sustainability per construction segment. I’ll explain.

“From 1994 to 2015, LEED grew from one standard for new construction to a comprehensive system of interrelated standards covering aspects from the design and construction to the maintenance and operation of buildings. LEED also has grown from six volunteers on one committee to 119,924 staff, volunteers and professionals.” — our friend wikipedia

Over 20 years of growth and iteration addressing a multitude scopes, differentiating per segment checklists, each checklist a presciption requiring different understandings, different actions, and so, different manners of achievement. The question here is, How on god’s green earth do we sidestep this overfitting?!

I wonder… can this massive rating infrastructure be reduced to attitudes? Can there be a rating system that keeps true to the spirit of sustainability? (spoilers, I think there can be) Those with solid understanding, that don’t dog regulation, but who take the initiative to lead, should, in theory, show intrinsic sustainable wisdom through action …right?

So… off the cuff, I flattened the manner of metric to 2 dimensions, instead of the 3D organism, the turned to the choice evaluation framework applied to writing, the rubric. Evaluation via rubric would allow for varied expressions of sustainability, and not suppress the spirit of those novel understandings, actions and manners of leadership so indicative of innovation. Plus, the 2 dimensional representation would side step computational complexity, while, still, enabling intuitive evaluations of businesses through visual language.

The results are imaged below with some explaination in the caption.

The vector model, above, grew a multiplier at its centroid, represented by a big dot. In this dot, the needs-based alignment and time-based pivot ability stayed categories, while a neighborly collaboration multiplier was added to encourage a community approach.

The assess the first vertical, focal depth of concept, labeled “understanding,” a series of keywords were analyzed in the context of annual reports as gauge for sustainable mindfulness. The second vertical is “action” taken toward sustainability. In development, more information on how to use the criteria could help raters. For example, carefully selected narratives of possible actions and leading steps along the three vectors, economy, culture and the environment could work to keep rater’s biases in check. (Speaking of bias, look forward to one of my next articles on developing an tool to tease out implicit bias in terms of intersectionality, but I digress.) It’s important that an exhaustive list of possible actions is not generated, as it may begin the ramblings of a prescriptive and compliance based sustainability code. Being sustainable is an attitude, and a mind set. It’s authentic, and you feel it. This notion translates into the “achievement” category in terms of inspiring sustainability and doing so from new angles.

The equality-based initial measure was accounted for in the “achievement” section of the rubric per vector.

After application

Using the criteria was surprisingly simple in analog. Because future incarnations of the tool would be automated, particularly in the understandings portion, a running list of up-to-date sustainable vocabularies and simple fraud detection techniques would need to be implemented.

And, in the same way future incarnations could include new core multipliers with associated weights per. An example of such an addition, would be adding the core multiplier number of patents published.

Insights

1. Most lacked a multimodal understandings of sustainability
2. Compliance centric businesses got lower scores in achievement.
3. Those who couldn’t jump outside of unsustainable inbound requirements or that were especially exposed to landscape changes in behavior suffered on their pivot potential multiplier score and actions forward scores in the economic category.

The total of the rubric is represented by the pale green backgrounds.

In the slide deck, I offer noted reasoning for each rubric per company. If you care to give the critera the scores per company more than cursory look. Click away.

In conclusion

The accuracy required to compare apples to oranges, would require both robust input data and dynamic weighting. To the contrary, when comparing apples to apples, the areas of intervention narrow considerably, so though the understanding column running down the economic, cultural and environmental vectors would stay the same, a*a, or a*o, metrics to quantify actions and leadership in category could be reasonably predicted, without requiring a more robust model, or exposing the model to variance due to human error. Though, even in a*a, we see the aforementioned example, LEED, proving the tendency to overfit and superimpose complience based codes on businesses. The recipe book is great to have, but you need soul to doctor a recipe and make it better and your own. That aside, I do recognize LEED as an extremely valuable entry level sustainability training tool for companies seeking to realign their employees expectations down multiple levels of managment.

A special thank you to MDES - Business Plan: Sustainability instructor, Brian Mullen, Innovation Strategy Manager of the Brigham Innovation Hub at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, for his directives and persistent will to challenge.