AGILE Sustainability: Recent Episodes
Hou Yifeng
Become more sustainable with AGILE. Explore topics coming soon at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
Hello, and welcome to the second episode of Food Sustainability on AGILE Sustainability. In this episode, we are delighted to have William from Ezy Gardening share how to create your own home garden and grow more nutritious vegetables. More importantly, home gardens can serve as an additional food source for individual householders to increase food security, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when global supply chains are disrupted.
The topics in this episode are:
00m:40s: Motivation to start Ezy Gardening
01m:47s: Hydroponics Farming and its advantages
02m:35s: Kickstart home gardening with Ezy Gardening
05m:00s: Available plants from Ezy Gardening
06m:06s: Tricks to increase home garden productivity
07m17s: Price differences between vegetables from home gardens and supermarkets
One of the highlights from William's sharing is the trick to increase the home garden's productivity. The trick is to reduce the influence of the surrounding environment. For example, if consumers want to grow more organic food, they could keep home gardens away from surrounding plants as much as possible. This is to avoid pests or accidental pesticide sprays from surrounding plants. If the influence from the surrounding environment is reduced, the grower machine from Ezy Gardening can more or less automate the growing process and generate higher yields.
To learn more about William and Ezy Gardening, check out their website at ezy-gardening.com. Moreover, you can follow their latest updates on Facebook and Instagram.
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi from Pixabay
Hello, and welcome to the first episode of the new series Smart Cities and Sustainability on AGILE Sustainability. This episode will talk about the interesting activities to explore food sustainability in Singapore. You might find similar activities in your cities as well. The types of activities introduced are:
- Online and offline discussion meetings organized by the National Library Board
- Hackathons and Challenges like Singapore Design Awards
- Local Farm Tours and Volunteer Events
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi and Lesfm from Pixabay
Hello, and welcome to another episode on AGILE Sustainability.
From the title of this episode smart city and sustainability, you might already notice something special about this episode. And you are right. I want to share a recent epiphany I had for sustainable development. It’s quite an interesting direction and I want to create a special series to explore more about it with you together.
In this introduction episode, we will go through the motivation behind this series and the potential interesting topics we will explore.
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi and Lesfm from Pixabay
Welcome to Episode 9 of AGILE Sustainability. Today, our guest speaker Grace from Greenview will take us on a journey that traverses the complex sustainability landscape.
Grace is the managing partner of Greenview. The Greenview team are passionate about exploring unexplored territories to bring the most useful and effective tools to help customers transition to sustainability. And they aim to improve their products iteratively with an Agile approach to address customer needs and feedback. Grace will tell us more about their innovative products and services today.
The topics in this podcast are:
00m:55s: Introduction to Grace and Greenview
01m:40s: Motivations to start a business on sustainability
02m:50s: Surprise findings after starting the sustainability business
04m:30s: Changes in sustainability practices over the years
07m:20s: Changes in customer needs over the years
13m:14s: Greenview products and services on sustainability
18m:03s: Suggestions for businesses embracing sustainability transitions
One of the highlights from Grace's sharing is the modern software portal they developed to help customers gain transparency on their environmental and social impacts. The Greenview team is dedicated to ensuring the accuracy of the data intelligence and insights they provide their customers. Moreover, they implement an elegant way to handle missing data by giving the customers a preview of the existing data they have as well as alerting them to the missing data gaps they need to solve to get a complete report.
To learn more about Grace and Greenview, check out their website at greenview.sg.
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi from Pixabay
Today, we are going to continue to put the puzzle pieces together for episodes 5 to 8.
EP5: Academic: Business Experiments for Sustainability Innovations by Ilka from Leuphana University of Luneburg
EP6: Business Transitions to Agile Practices by David Varvel
EP7: Influencer Marketing and Sustainability by Carmen and Mercedes from the University of Zaragoza
EP8: SHIFT consumer behaviours to be more sustainable by David Hardisty
I will use the following structure to do the recap. Firstly, I will do a brief introduction to the speakers and their background. Then, I will share the questions we discussed in the episode. Following that, I will elaborate on one highlight from the speaker’s sharing.
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Today, we are going to put the puzzle pieces together. In the future, we will continue to have this putting puzzle pieces together session when we gather enough interesting content. I hope these recap sessions will help new listeners quickly find the episode that interests them the most.
Let’s first start with episodes 1 to 4.
EP1: Sustainability and Software Development by Ramji from A Better Consultancy
EP2: Balancing Profitability and Sustainability by Garima from Georgia State University
EP3: Digital Sustainability by Simon from Singapore Management University, Handprint and Global Mangrove Trust
EP4: Sustainability Reporting by Kristjan from Copenhagen Business School
I will use the following structure to do the recap. Firstly, I will do a brief introduction to the speakers and their background. Then, I will share the questions we discussed in the episode. Following that, I will elaborate on one highlight from the speaker’s sharing.
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Welcome to Episode 8 of AGILE Sustainability. In this episode, we will switch our perspective from business to focus on consumers for a change, as a business can't transition to sustainability properly without the buy-in from its consumers.
The speakers for the podcast, David Hardisty and his co-authors Katherine White and Rishad Habib proposed a SHIFT framework that could serve as a toolbox for practitioners to form business strategies to influence consumer behaviours on sustainability.
The SHIFT framework includes the following factors:
- Social Influence
- Habit Formation
- Individual Self
- Feelings and Cognitions
- Tangibility
The topics in this podcast are:
00m58s: Introduction on David and his research focus
01m25s: Motivations for building the SHIFT framework
03m50s: Consumer behaviours' impact on the environment
05m33s: SHIFT consumer behaviours walkthrough
10m53s: Staring point to use the SHIFT framework
13m03s: Things to avoid when forming strategies to influence consumers
16m54s: Future opportunities for collaboration on the SHIFT framework
One of the highlights from David's sharing is to avoid guilt-tripping consumers when businesses form influence strategies on sustainability. One of the reasons to avoid guilt-tripping is that it might backfire and create resistance among consumers that will eventually drive them away. Instead, what businesses could do is to make sustainability behaviours very easy to achieve for consumers. For example, set the paperless option as default and provide an option to opt-out if users want to receive paper mail.
Articles on the SHIFT framework
- The Elusive Green Consumer
- How to SHIFT Consumer Behaviors to be More Sustainable: A Literature Review and Guiding Framework
- Shifting consumer behavior to address climate change
To learn more about David's upcoming research, follow him on Twitter @dhardisty or check out his personal website and university profile.
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi from Pixabay
Welcome to Episode 7 of AGILE Sustainability. Marketing is an important business activity. Therefore, it's useful for businesses to leverage marketing to serve corporate sustainability. To help our listeners explore this connection, we have invited Carmen and Mercedes from the University of Zaragoza to elaborate on this topic.
Carmen and Mercedes investigated the correlation between different types of marketing and their ability to serve corporate sustainability. In specifics, Influencer Marketing and Relationship Marketing stand out as the more modern and effective channels to exert influences on sustainability.
The topics in this podcast are:
- 00m57s: Comparison of Influencer and Relationship Marketing
- 03m54s: Relationship between marketing and corporate sustainability
- 05m39s: Challenges on serving corporate sustainability via marketing
- 08m10s: Influencer traits suitable to serve corporate sustainability
- 10m24s: Marketing considerations for the pursuit of corporate sustainability
- 18m15s: Marketing strategies for corporate sustainability
One of the highlights from Carmen and Mercedes sharing is the ideal influencer traits on serving corporate sustainability. The three most important traits of an influencer are credibility, pleasantness, and emotions. Credibility affects how trustworthy the customers will feel about the delivered marketing message. Pleasantness helps to initiate a relationship between the brand and the customers. And last but not the least, emotions will help to strengthen and prolong the relationship in the long run. Businesses can look for or develop influencers based on these three ideal traits.
To learn more about Carmen and Mercedes's research on this topic, you can read the article here.
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi from Pixabay
Welcome to Episode 6 of AGILE Sustainability. This is a very special episode as we are going to dive deeper into the Software Agile Practices and explore the implications of Sustainability Transitions for businesses.
David Varvel, who's a super-experienced software practitioner on Agile practices, will take us on the journey of transforming businesses with Agile practices. He has abundant experience in applying Agile methodology in startups and large enterprises. In these projects, he witnessed the challenges that businesses faced while adopting Agile and how to overcome these challenges. Similar to Agile practices, sustainability introduces disruptive changes to business models and requires businesses to adapt quickly to survive.
The topics in this podcast are:
- 01m08s: Introduction to David's experiences in Agile
- 03m23s: Benefits and Motivations for businesses to adopt Agile
- 05m54s: An Example of Agile Practices delivering value for businesses
- 09m54s: Challenges for businesses to adopt Agile
- 12m41s: Mindset Shifts when introducing Agile
- 15m13s: Scale new practices like Agile within an organization
- 19m53s: Transferrable lessons from adopting Agile to Sustainability
One of the highlights from David's sharing is to be mindful of the conflicts between new and old practices during the transition. To scale new practices in the face of resistance, it's important to protect the seedling of change until it can withstand external hostility. One possible solution is to create a new environment to grow the team with new practices and to build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that demonstrates the benefits of new practices. Subsequently, the seedling team and the MVP can serve as an example for future teams to learn and scale the new practices.
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi from Pixabay
Welcome to Episode 5 of AGILE Sustainability. In this episode, we will talk about leveraging business experiments to derisk sustainability innovations with Ilka Weissbrod.
Ilka is a sustainable innovation expert and researcher. She works closely with both academic researchers and business practitioners. One of her research elaborated on the benefits of business experimentation in facilitating sustainability transitions. Given the time sensitivity around sustainability transitions, business experiments can serve as a useful tool to derisk the business innovations on sustainability and iteratively polish the transition plan based on feedback from the experiments.
The topics in this podcast are:
- 00m08s: Introduction to Ilka and her research
- 03m11s: Radical Innovations vs Normal Innovations
- 04m50s: Radical Innovations in Relation to Sustainability
- 08m32s: Example Radical Sustainability Innovations
- 09m52s: Barriers and Challenges Around Sustainability Innovations
- 11m18s: Business Capabilities that Help to Overcome the Barriers
- 13m39s: Templates to Design the Business Experiments
- 17m57s: Common Timespans for Business Experiments
- 19m27s: Keys to Promote Collaboration between Academic and Business Practitioners
One of the highlights from Ilka's sharing is utilizing the Lean Startup methodology and Business Model Canvas as a template to design business experiments. When designing the experiments, businesses could quickly polish their business innovations by shortening the period of the experiment. At the same time, businesses could derisk radical innovations and gain confidence in the innovation among the organization by validating assumptions through business experiments.
If you like this podcast, you can learn more about Ilka's experiences and research on her website.
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi from Pixabay
Welcome to Episode 4 of AGILE Sustainability. In this episode, we invited a very experienced speaker on Sustainability Reporting, Kristjan Jespersen.
Kristjan collaborated closely with the palm oil sector to build sustainability reports that demonstrate the sector's commitment to maintaining a sustainable environment. This collaboration experience gave him valuable first-hand information on how sustainability reporting evolved over the years in response to changes in external regulations around sustainability. Now he is generous to share those valuable insights with our listeners, who want to start building or improving their sustainability reporting to align with their business strategies.
The topics in this podcast are:
- 00m44s Introduction on Kristjan and his research
- 02m14 s Benefits of investing in Sustainability Reporting
- 04m53s Evolvement of Sustainability Reporting for businesses
- 08m30s Means to get started on Sustainability Reporting
- 13m12s Useful frameworks or standards for Sustainability Reporting
- 17m49s Efficient methods to collect and manage data for reports
- 20m35s An example of strategic use of sustainability reports
- 23m30s Future Trends in Sustainability Reporting
One of the highlights from Kristjan's sharing is to leverage an agile approach when building sustainability reports. It's very difficult for businesses to craft finalized standards or templates for sustainability reports on the first try. And, commonly, sustainability reports get improved in iterations and, normally, each iteration introduces different changes than the previous iteration. What's important is the learning journey that companies go through to increase the transparency on the company's status on sustainable development via building sustainability reports.
If you like this podcast and want to learn more about Kristjan's experiences and research, do visit his profile page here.
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
Find the transcription of this podcast here.
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi from Pixabay
Welcome to Episode 3 of AGILE Sustainability. In this episode, we invited a very experienced and protean speaker on Digital Sustainability, Simon SCHILLEBEECKX.
Simon seamlessly consolidates academic research and business practices. He is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Management from Singapore Management University. He is also an entrepreneur who founded a social enterprise called Handprint and an NGO called Global Mangrove Trust. His strong background in both the academic and business world makes his insights on Digital Sustainability all the more incisive.
The topics in this podcast are:
- 00m49s Introduction on Simon and his research and businesses
- 04m11s Definition of Digital Sustainability
- 05m29s Signs that Digitization and Sustainability are Converging
- 06m58s Key drivers for businesses to shift towards Digital Sustainability
- 14m44s Useful digital tools for businesses to transit to sustainability
- 22m31s Digital tools used by Handprint and Global Mangrove Trust
- 26m50s Connect with Simon and his businesses
One of the highlights from Simon’s sharing is a powerful use case of digital tools for promoting sustainability. Before the widespread of digital technology, carbon emission reductions are intangible, difficult to quantify, and nearly impossible to claim ownership. Therefore it's challenging for businesses to prove their carbon emissions are neutralized by the emission reduction resources like forests they invest in. Simon shared a very interesting solution to this challenge with a combination of modern digital tools, namely blockchain, machine learning, and satellites. If you are interested in the details of this use case, you can find more on the topic of Useful Digital Tools for Businesses to Transit to Sustainability in this podcast.
If you like this podcast and want to learn more from Simon, you can read about her research areas on his website. You can also check out his businesses at Handprint and Global Mangrove Trust.
Find the transcription here.
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi from Pixabay
Welcome to Episode 2 of AGILE Sustainability. In this episode, we are lucky to have an academic on business sustainability research Garima with us.
Garima is an Assistant Professor at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, at Georgia State University. One of her research focuses is to study how businesses balance profitability and sustainability. She has worked closely with businesses to understand how they act, think and make decisions around social and profit goals. And she is kindly sharing her insights for people who find balancing profit and sustainable goals challenging.
The topics in this podcast are:
- 00m43s: Introduction to Garima and her research
- 02m28s: Pressing motivations for business to initiate sustainability transition
- 07m42s: Crafting a sustainable plan in the face of volatility
- 12m24s: Useful systematic tools to dissect complex problems
- 14m06s: Measuring progress during sustainability transition
- 17m16s: Balancing profitability and sustainability
- 21m09s: Promoting collaboration between academics and business practitioners
One of the highlights from Garima’s insights on balancing profitability and sustainability is to challenge the assumption of a zero-sum game in business development in terms of resource allocations, and that social issues and business issues are decoupled. You can learn more about why these two assumptions should be challenged in the podcast. As a result, when businesses move further away from these two assumptions, they will open up more room for potential solutions and opportunities when incorporating sustainability in their business models.
If you like this podcast and want to learn more from Garima, you can read about her research areas on her website.
Find the transcription here.
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi from Pixabay
Welcome to Episode 1 of AGILE Sustainability. In this episode, we are pleased to have a business practitioner on a sustainability project Ramji with us.
Ramji is the co-founder of A Better Consultancy providing Agile software services. Recently, Ramji and his team delivered a software product on sustainability, and he is willing to share the learnings and advice for people who want to transition to a more sustainable business.
The topics in this podcast are:
- 00m08s: Introduction to Ramji and ABC
- 01m52s: Prior experiences in Sustainability
- 03m25s: Challenges on Businesses to Adopt Sustainability
- 08m50s: Entry Point to implement Sustainability solutions
- 15m01s: Spread of Sustainability knowledge within the team
- 16m30s: Useful things to know before the project
- 19m05s: Advice for other Business Practitioners adopting Sustainability solutions
One of the highlights from Ramji's sharing is the idea of evolving the framework for solving Sustainability challenges in a similar way that open-source software evolves and improves over time. The benefit of open source is that anyone can contribute to it, use it and distribute it. As a result, every software engineer can save efforts from reinventing the wheels and deliver valuable products to end-users faster. With similar logic, it might help to improve and distribute the framework for Sustainability solutions more efficiently to businesses.
If you like this podcast and want to learn more from Ramji, you can contact him through his company website. He and his team offer high-quality services at a reasonable price.
Find the transcription here.
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi from Pixabay
AGILE Sustainability
Become more sustainable with AGILE
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at yhou@vreamer.space
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi from Pixabay
Hello, and welcome to the second episode of Food Sustainability on AGILE Sustainability. In this episode, we are delighted to have William from Ezy Gardening share how to create your own home garden and grow more nutritious vegetables. More importantly, home gardens can serve as an additional food source to individual householders to increase food security, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when global supply chains are disrupted.
The topics in this episode are:
00m:40s: Motivation to start Ezy Gardening
01m:47s: Hydroponics Farming and its advantages
02m:35s: Kickstart home gardening with Ezy Gardening
05m:00s: Available plants from Ezy Gardening
06m:06s: Tricks to increase home garden productivity
07m17s: Price differences between vegetables from home gardens and supermarkets
One of the highlights from William's sharing is the trick to increase home garden's productivity. The trick is to reduce the influence of the surrounding environment. For example, if consumers want to grow more organic food, they could keep home gardens away from surrounding plants as much as possible. This is to avoid pests or accidental pesticide spray from surrounding plants. If the influence from the surrounding environment is reduced, the grower machine from Ezy Gardening can more or less automate the growing process and generate higher yields.
To learn more about William and Ezy Gardening, check out their website at ezy-gardening.com. Moreover, you can follow their latest updates on Facebook and Instagram.
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi from Pixabay
Hello, and welcome to the first episode of the new series Smart Cities and Sustainability on AGILE Sustainability. This episode will talk about the interesting activities to explore food sustainability in Singapore. You might find similar activities in your cities as well. The type of activities introduces are:
- Online and offline discussion meetings organized by the National Library Board
- Hackathons and Challenges like Singapore Design Awards
- Local Farm Tours and Volunteer Events
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi and Lesfm from Pixabay
Hello, and welcome to another episode on AGILE Sustainability.
From the title of this episode smart city and sustainability, you might already notice something special about this episode. And you are absolutely right. I want to share a recent epiphany I got for sustainable development. It’s quite an interesting direction and I want to create a special series to explore more about it with you together.
In this introduction episode, we will go through the motivation behind this series and the potential interesting topics we will explore.
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi and Lesfm from Pixabay
Welcome to Episode 9 of AGILE Sustainability. Today, our guest speaker Grace from Greenview will take us on a journey that traverses the complex sustainability landscape.
Grace is the managing partner of Greenview. The Greenview team are passionate about exploring the unexplored territories to bring the most useful and effective tools to help customer transition to sustainability. And they aim to improve their products iteratively with an Agile approach to address customer needs and feedbacks. Grace will tell us more about their innovative products and services today.
The topics in this podcast are:
00m:55s: Introduction on Grace and Greenview
01m:40s: Motivations to start a business on sustainability
02m:50s: Surprise findings after starting the sustainability business
04m:30s: Changes in sustainability practices over the years
07m:20s: Changes in customer need over the years
13m:14s: Greenview products and services on sustainability
18m:03s: Suggestions for businesses embracing sustainability transitions
One of the highlights from Grace's sharing is the modern software portal they develop to help customers to gain transparency on their environmental and social impacts. The Greenview team is dedicated to ensuring the accuracy of the data intelligence and insights they provide their customers. Moreover, they implement an elegant way to handle missing data by giving the customers a preview of the existing data they have as well as alerting them to the missing data gaps they need to solve to get a complete report.
To learn more about Grace and Greenview, check out their website at greenview.sg.
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi from Pixabay
Today, we are going to continue to put the puzzle pieces together for episodes 5 to 8.
EP5: Academic: Business Experiments for Sustainability Innovations by Ilka from Leuphana University of Luneburg
EP6: Business Transitions to Agile Practices by David Varvel
EP7: Influencer Marketing and Sustainability by Carmen and Mercedes from the University of Zaragoza
EP8: SHIFT consumer behaviors to be more sustainable by David Hardisty
I will use the following structure to do the recap. Firstly, I will do a brief introduction to the speakers and their background. Then, I will share the questions we discussed in the episode. Following that, I will elaborate on one highlight from the speaker’s sharing.
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Today, we are going to put the puzzle pieces together. In the future, we will continue to have this putting puzzle pieces together session when we gather enough interesting content. I hope these recap sessions will help new listeners quickly find the episode that interests them the most.
Let’s first start with episodes 1 to 4.
EP1: Sustainability and Software Development by Ramji from A Better Consultancy
EP2: Balancing Profitability and Sustainability by Garima from Georgia State University
EP3: Digital Sustainability by Simon from Singapore Management University, Handprint and Global Mangrove Trust
EP4: Sustainability Reporting by Kristjan from Copenhagen Business School
I will use the following structure to do the recap. Firstly, I will do a brief introduction to the speakers and their background. Then, I will share the questions we discussed in the episode. Following that, I will elaborate on one highlight from the speaker’s sharing.
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Welcome to Episode 8 of AGILE Sustainability. In this episode, we will switch our perspective from business to focus on consumers for a change, as a business can't transition to sustainability properly without the buy-in from its consumers.
The speakers for the podcast, David Hardisty and his co-authors Katherine White and Rishad Habib proposed a SHIFT framework that could serve as a toolbox for practitioners to form business strategies to influence consumer behaviors on sustainability.
The SHIFT framework includes the following factors:
- Social Influence
- Habit Formation
- Individual Self
- Feelings and Cognitions
- Tangibility
The topics in this podcast are:
00m58s: Introduction on David and his research focus
01m25s: Motivations for building the SHIFT framework
03m50s: Consumer behaviors' impact on the environment
05m33s: SHIFT consumer behaviors walkthrough
10m53s: Staring point to use the SHIFT framework
13m03s: Things to avoid when forming strategies to influence consumers
16m54s: Future opportunities for collaboration on the SHIFT framework
One of the highlights from David's sharing is to avoid guilt-tripping consumers when businesses form influence strategies on sustainability. One of the reasons to avoid guilt-tripping is that it might backfire and create resistance among consumers that will eventually drive them away. Instead, what businesses could do is to make sustainability behaviors very easy to achieve by consumers. For example, set the paperless option as default and provide an option to opt out if users really want to receive paper mail.
Articles on the SHIFT framework
- The Elusive Green Consumer
- How to SHIFT Consumer Behaviors to be More Sustainable: A Literature Review and Guiding Framework
- Shifting consumer behavior to address climate change
To learn more about David's upcoming research, follow him on Twitter @dhardisty or check out his personal website and university profile.
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi from Pixabay
Welcome to Episode 7 of AGILE Sustainability. Marketing is an important business activity. Therefore, it's useful for businesses to leverage marketing to serve corporate sustainability. To help our listeners explore this connection, we have invited Carmen and Mercedes from the University of Zaragoza to elaborate on this topic.
Carmen and Mercedes investigated the correlation between different types of marketing and their ability to serve corporate sustainability. In specifics, Influencer Marketing and Relationship Marketing stand out as the more modern and effective channels to exert influences on sustainability.
The topics in this podcast are:
- 00m57s: Comparison of Influencer and Relationship Marketing
- 03m54s: Relationship between marketing and corporate sustainability
- 05m39s: Challenges on serving corporate sustainability via marketing
- 08m10s: Influencer traits suitable to serve corporate sustainability
- 10m24s: Marketing considerations for the pursuit of corporate sustainability
- 18m15s: Marketing strategies for corporate sustainability
One of the highlights from Carmen and Mercedes sharing is the ideal influencer traits on serving corporate sustainability. The three most important traits of an influencer are credibility, pleasantness, and emotions. Credibility affects how trustworthy the customers will feel about the delivered marketing message. Pleasantness helps to initiate a relationship between the brand and the customers. And last but not the least, emotions will help to strengthen and prolong the relationship in the long run. Businesses can look for or develop influencers based on these three ideal traits.
To learn more about Carmen and Mercedes's research on this topic, you can read the article here.
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi from Pixabay
Welcome to Episode 6 of AGILE Sustainability. This is a very special episode as we are going to dive deeper into the Software Agile Practices and explore the implications of Sustainability Transitions for businesses.
David Varvel, who's a super experienced software practitioner on Agile practices, will take us on the journey of transforming businesses with Agile practices. He has abundant experience in applying Agile methodology in startups and large enterprises. In these projects, he witnessed the challenges that businesses faced while adopting Agile and how to overcome these challenges. Similar to Agile practices, sustainability introduces disruptive changes to business models and requires businesses to adapt quickly to survive.
The topics in this podcast are:
- 01m08s: Introduction on David's experiences on Agile
- 03m23s: Benefits and Motivations for businesses to adopt Agile
- 05m54s: An Example on Agile Practices delivering value for businesses
- 09m54s: Challenges for businesses to adopt Agile
- 12m41s: Mindset Shifts when introducing Agile
- 15m13s: Scale new practices like Agile within an organization
- 19m53s: Transferrable lessons from adopting Agile to Sustainability
One of the highlights from David's sharing is to be mindful of the conflicts between new and old practices during the transition. In order to scale new practices in the face of resistance, it's important to protect the seedling of change until it can withstand external hostility. One possible solution is to create a new environment to grow the team with new practices and to build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that demonstrates the benefits of new practices. Subsequently, the seedling team and the MVP can serve as an example for future teams to learn and scale the new practices.
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi from Pixabay
Welcome to Episode 5 of AGILE Sustainability. In this episode, we will talk about leveraging business experiments to derisk sustainability innovations with Ilka Weissbrod.
Ilka is a sustainable innovation expert and researcher. She works closely with both academic researchers and business practitioners. One of her researches elaborated on the benefits of business experimentations in facilitating sustainability transitions. Given the time sensitivity around sustainability transitions, business experiments can serve as a useful tool to derisk the business innovations on sustainability and iteratively polish the transition plan based on feedback from the experiments.
The topics in this podcast are:
- 00m08s: Introduction on Ilka and her research
- 03m11s: Radical Innovations vs Normal Innovations
- 04m50s: Radical Innovations in relation to Sustainability
- 08m32s: Example Radical Sustainability Innovations
- 09m52s: Barriers and Challenges around Sustainability Innovations
- 11m18s: Business Capabilities that Helps to Overcome the Barriers
- 13m39s: Templates to Design the Business Experiments
- 17m57s: Common Timespans for Business Experiments
- 19m27s: Keys to Promote Collaboration between Academic and Business Practitioners
One of the highlights from Ilka's sharing is utilizing the Lean Startup methodology and Business Model Canvas as a template to design business experiments. When designing the experiments, businesses could quickly polish their business innovations by shortening the time span of the experiment. At the same time, businesses could derisk radical innovations and gain confidence for the innovation among the organization by validating assumptions through business experiments.
If you like this podcast, you can learn more about Ilka's experiences and research on her website.
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi from Pixabay
Welcome to Episode 4 of AGILE Sustainability. In this episode, we invited a very experienced speaker on Sustainability Reporting, Kristjan Jespersen.
Kristjan collaborated closely with the palm oil sector to build sustainability reports that demonstrate the sector's commitments to maintaining a sustainable environment. This collaboration experience gave him valuable first-hand information on how sustainability reporting evolved over the years in response to changes in external regulations around sustainability. Now he is generous to share those valuable insights with our listeners, who want to start building or improve their sustainability reporting to align with their business strategies.
The topics in this podcast are:
- 00m44s Introduction on Kristjan and his research
- 02m14 s Benefits of investing in Sustainability Reporting
- 04m53s Evolvement of Sustainability Reporting for businesses
- 08m30s Means to get started on Sustainability Reporting
- 13m12s Useful frameworks or standards for Sustainability Reporting
- 17m49s Efficient methods to collect and manage data for reports
- 20m35s An example of strategic use of sustainability reports
- 23m30s Future trends in Sustainability Reporting
One of the highlights from Kristjan's sharing is to leverage an agile approach when building sustainability reports. It's very difficult for businesses to craft a finalized standards or templates for sustainability reports on the first try. And it's common that sustainability reports get improved in iterations and it's normal that each iteration introduces different changes than their previous iteration. What's important is the learning journey that companies go through to increase the transparency on the company's status on sustainable development via building sustainability reports.
If you like this podcast and want to learn more about Kristjan's experiences and research, do visit his profile page here.
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
Find the transcription of this podcast here.
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi from Pixabay
Welcome to Episode 3 of AGILE Sustainability. In this episode, we invited a very experienced and protean speaker on Digital Sustainability, Simon SCHILLEBEECKX.
Simon seamlessly consolidates academic research and business practices. He is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Management from Singapore Management University. He is also an entrepreneur who founded a social enterprise called Handprint and an NGO called Global Mangrove Trust. His strong background in both the academic and business world makes his insights on Digital Sustainability all the more incisive.
The topics in this podcast are:
- 00m49s Introduction on Simon and his research and businesses
- 04m11s Definition of Digital Sustainability
- 05m29s Signs that Digitization and Sustainability are converging
- 06m58s Key drivers for businesses to shift towards Digital Sustainability
- 14m44s Useful digital tools for businesses to transit to sustainability
- 22m31s Digital tools used by Handprint and Global Mangrove Trust
- 26m50s Connect with Simon and his businesses
One of the highlights from Simon’s sharing is a powerful use case of digital tools on promoting sustainability. Before the widespread of digital technology, carbon emission reductions are intangible, difficult to quantify, and nearly impossible to claim ownership. Therefore it's challenging for businesses to prove their carbon emissions are neutralized by the emission reduction resources like forests they invest in. Simon shared a very interesting solution to this challenge with a combination of modern digital tools, namely blockchain, machine learning, and satellites. If you are interested in the details of this use case, you can find more from the topic of Useful Digital Tools for Businesses to Transit to Sustainability in this podcast.
If you like this podcast and want to learn more from Simon, you can read about her research areas on his website. You can also check out his businesses at Handprint and Global Mangrove Trust.
Find the transcription here.
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi from Pixabay
Welcome to Episode 2 of AGILE Sustainability. In this episode, we are lucky to have an academic on business sustainability research Garima with us.
Garima is an Assistant Professor at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University. One of her research focuses is to study how businesses balance profitability and sustainability. She has worked closely with businesses to understand how they act, think and make decisions around social and profit goals. And she is kindly sharing her insights for people who find balancing profit and sustainable goals challenging.
The topics in this podcast are:
- 00m43s: Introduction on Garima and her research
- 02m28s: Pressing motivations for business to initiate sustainability transition
- 07m42s: Crafting a sustainable plan in the face of volatility
- 12m24s: Useful systematic tools to dissect complex problems
- 14m06s: Measuring progress during sustainability transition
- 17m16s: Balancing profitability and sustainability
- 21m09s: Promoting collaboration between academics and business practitioners
One of the highlights from Garima’s insights on balancing profitability and sustainability is to challenge the assumption of a zero-sum game in business development in terms of resource allocations, and that social issues and business issues are decoupled. You can learn more about why these two assumptions should be challenged in the podcast. As a result, when businesses move further away from these two assumptions, they will open up more room for potential solutions and opportunities when incorporating sustainability in their business models.
If you like this podcast and want to learn more from Garima, you can read about her research areas on her website.
Find the transcription here.
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi from Pixabay
Welcome to Episode 1 of AGILE Sustainability. In this episode, we are pleased to have a business practitioner on a sustainability project Ramji with us.
Ramji is the co-founder of A Better Consultancy providing Agile software services. Recently, Ramji and his team delivered a software product on sustainability, and he is willing to share the learnings and advice for people who want to transition to a more sustainable business.
The topics in this podcast are:
- 00m08s: Introduction on Ramji and ABC
- 01m52s: Prior experiences in Sustainability
- 03m25s: Challenges on Businesses to adopt Sustainability
- 08m50s: Entry Point to implement Sustainability solutions
- 15m01s: Spread of Sustainability knowledge within the team
- 16m30s: Useful things to know before the project
- 19m05s: Advice for other Business Practitioners adopting Sustainability solutions
One of the highlights from Ramji's sharing is the idea of evolving the framework for solving Sustainability challenges in a similar way that an open-source software evolves and improves over time. The benefit of open-source is that anyone can contribute to it, use it and distribute it. As a result, every software engineer can save efforts from not reinventing the wheels and deliver valuable products to end-users faster. With similar logic, it might help to improve and distribute the framework for Sustainability solutions more efficiently to businesses.
If you like this podcast and want to learn more from Ramji, you can contact him through his company website. He and his team offer high-quality services at a reasonable price.
Find the transcription here.
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi from Pixabay
AGILE Sustainability
Become more sustainable with AGILE
Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/
We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.
Music by Wataboi from Pixabay