Sustainability: ESRI Australia’s Driver for Innovation

“Business must be run for a profit, else it will die. But when anyone tries to run a business solely for profit …then also the business will die, for it no longer has a reason for existence. -Henry Ford

This past week I attended a Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) presentation by Charles Ainger, Visiting Professor in Engineering for Sustainable Development, Cambridge University UK. Called “Chasing the Buzz – Building business through culture based innovation”, it examined the risks and obstacles to companies developing innovation as a strategy.

It is a challenge for highly structured organisations to add anything extra into hard-pressed operational systems and time. The real barriers to innovation, suggests Ainger, are:

• Customers are not asking for it
• We can’t invest time and money upfront
• It’s a nice long term goal, but we can’t afford it just now
• We can’t take the risk of accepting that new technology
• We can’t measure it yet, can we?
• Can you guarantee it will work?
• Who did you say gave you authority…?
• We haven’t got time…

These are familiar excuses that block innovation, new ideas, change. But where society is changing rapidly, or where values and needs have already changed, many companies have some catching up to do. One of the leading drivers of innovation today, and one that is reaping benefits way beyond a new product or service, is sustainability.

“What drives entrepreneurs and innovators?” asks Ainger. “If meaning cannot be found in the workplace, our ability to lead a fulfilling life is seriously impaired. The importance of understanding how work can contribute to meaning in life seems more critical now than ever before. It is purpose, “meaning” and motivation that drive entrepreneurs and innovators,” he concludes.

But for most large organisations, Ainger suggests that a deep cultural and mindset change needs to take place, and it requires innovation if it is to be effective, not just compliance.

This is an important point, as to-date, many organisations have approached corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability initiatives (and reporting) as “check the box” compliance exercises. To follow Ainger’s line, they are missing out on business opportunities driven by innovation born of a desire for sustainability.

Ainger adds that where a company may be able to draw upon a deep well of staff interest and enthusiasm, it can connect to their values, and allow them to drive the sustainability innovation from the bottom up, to great effect.

“Find your organisational purpose and social context to create meaning and creativity for innovation, and sustainability,” says Ainger.

I write about and advise companies with regard to reputational risk, corporate social responsibility strategy, communications and community engagement. Ainger’s presentation resonates with me as it presents a way forward through the excuses. To those companies that say we haven’t got time, free your staff to drive an initiative from the ground up – something for which they have passion – and watch what happens. It may be transformational for all involved.

It is with this contextual background that I tell the story of Koala Diaries… What was clear at the outset is that whatever has been done to save the koala to-date, hasn’t worked. Where South East Queensland was home to the largest population of koalas in Australia, it is now the smallest. Unchecked development has seen the destruction of habitat, forcing koalas to survive in highly urban environments, and in areas deemed low value habitat, with too-few koala food trees to sustain them.

Teaming up with a neighbour who is a koala carer, Carolyn Beaton (aka @koaladiaries), I built a website that Carolyn has filled with loads of information, fabulous photos and a national koala-carers forum to support those working on the ground to save the population, one koala at a time. Our purpose behind this website, www.koaladiaries.com.au, is to provide a resource for community education and engagement in the protection of koalas.

Our first community project is a Koala Sighting Census, because while there are habitat maps available, they document the trees – not the animals. No one really knows how many koalas are left, where they are, or in what general condition. So answering these three questions was our original goal with Project Location. Having got as far as being able to capture the data required, I had no way of analysing or displaying it…

So I approached ESRI Australia, a company that produces highly technical GIS software. But it was what they can do with this software – the location intelligence tools and layers – that really interested me. I wanted web-based access to a submission map that would feed the geocodes through to a display map for each sighting recorded, and to be able to split the feed by defined criteria – such as alive, injured or dead, by date, etc.

I didn’t go to ESRI asking for money, or even free software. My first question was whether the software would allow me to do what I wanted – as part of my evaluation as to whether I would buy and learn it (as I am inclined to do when I need something fast!). While the initial response was no, it couldn’t, I pointed the tech who I had on the phone to the website, still under construction. It had sufficient information to inspire him to take it up the line to see if it was something ESRI could build for me.

ESRI initially said no – no time, no budget, no customer requests, etc. But this does not in my mind make them look bad at all, because what happened next, shows the true spirit of the company.

The idea took on a life of its own within the tech department and staff continued to discuss the concept and how it could be achieved, and then took the idea back to management with a plan. The decision turnaround came in two days, and suddenly, I had one of the best GIS tech teams in the world, building a web-based platform for a Koala Sighting Census with a forward motion that surprised everyone. Hats off to ESRI Australia for demonstrating the very essence of “sustainability as a driver for innovation”.

Within a couple of weeks I had my first meeting with them (yes, very first meeting), wherein they demonstrated what they had built for Koala Diaries. We launched the project in February, and already have had thousands of visitors, have hundreds of members, and now hundreds of sightings logged.

The relationship with ESRI is so much more than a philanthropic donation or formal agreement with a CSR department could ever be. We engaged the hearts and minds of its people with our story, and we have a deep and mutually rewarding relationship that is driving innovation within the company, and through its customers, as they now consider what they too can do to be a part of this initiative. Already we are receiving offers from ESRI customers to supply their geospatial information to us to layer over the sightings so we can evaluate issues impacting koalas, such as human population growth, development and more.

For the above reasons, Koala Diaries won a GIS in Community Award at the 2010 OZRI / APUC conference on March 4th.
ESRI founder Jack Dangermond with Koala Diaries co-founder (and editor of this blog) Alex Harris, and ESRI Australia Managing Director, Brett Bundock at the OZRI / APUC conference 2010.

All kudos to ESRI for showing it is open to bottom-up innovation, for allowing its people the freedom to drive this initiative and for engaging at every level, to now partner with us for the long-term development of a platform that will itself drive better decision making for sustainable development and the protection of koalas in Queensland, and soon we hope, Australia-wide.

The interesting side note to this story is that at the OZRI conference where we presented the Koala Diaries project, founder of ESRI, Dr Jack Dangermond, revealed that ESRI’s flagship product, ArcGIS, would in version 10 (due June/July) be available as a web-based platform with the provision for customers to share information and geospatial layers, with a trend towards user-generated content. Snap: simultaneous top-down and bottom-up innovation.

ESRI Australia’s contribution to Koaladiaries.com.au is a perfect case study for Professor Ainger of the simultaneous top-down/bottom-up sustainability innovation driven by staff interest and enthusiasm, motivated by employee values.

It is also demonstrative of Jack Dangermond’s own driving values. In an interview with Investors Business Daily in August last year, Dangermond revealed an inspirational philosophy:

“Someone once told me be interested, not interesting — that really clicked for me,” Dangermond told IBD. He found that working with people on crucial matters was “a lot more success-focused” than just trying to address one’s own needs.

Dangermond, 63, goes against the grain on another front: He eschews incentives such as sales commissions. “People want to do the right thing; they want to be purposeful in their life,” he said. “Throwing financial thresholds and goals — my experience in running at least my kind of organization is that it robs people of the culture of doing great things.”

Kind of says it all, doesn’t it?

As a CSR devotee, I feel privileged to witness first-hand a company operate in this manner. To have ESRI Australia as a partner in our Koala Sighting Census project on www.koaladiaries.com.au, I feel blessed.

(And so, to my Twitter followers who are perplexed by my bleating about Koala Diaries all the time, now you know why!)

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Tags: corporate behaviour, corporate social responsibility (CSR), CSR & Sustainability, culture, ESRI, featured, koala diaries, koaladiaries.com.au, social responsibility

Category: CSR & Sustainability, Reputation Management