China Daily – SMEs given preferential policies in govt procurement
New York Times – The Ying and the Yang of Corporate Information
Stuff.co.nz – Gremlins’ delays add up to headaches
The Daily Telegraph – Apple iCloud: will the Cloud finally go mainstream?
Harvard Business Review – An Introvert’s Guide to Networking
ICMIF Blog – Can Popular Capitalism go global?
The Lawyer – Never Knowingly Undersold: Employee Share Ownership
Ethos Journal – Common Purpose
By David Bicknell
It’s a couple of weeks since Steve Jobs left us. Many tributes have been paid. With sustainability in mind, I liked this blog post from Andrew Winston entitled ‘What Sustainability should learn from Steve Jobs.’
It’s not so much about Apple and sustainability. But it’s about Steve Jobs’ eye for innovation and one important lesson that sustainability-minded leaders can learn from Jobs’ legacy: you should lead your customers and show them a better way.
Winston, who writes regularly for the Harvard Business Review, suggests that most large companies today are “fast followers” – with ‘fiscal and strategic conservatism breeding a culture where execs prefer to wait and talk to customers before doing anything drastic. Of course customer (and other stakeholder) perspectives are critical. But as with tablet computers, when it comes to sustainability, often the customers don’t really know what they need.
“Companies often gather data on what their business customers think a sustainable product should be, and the survey might show that including recycled material is important, even if that’s a tiny part of the real footprint story. Nobody knows the value chain of your product and service as well as you do (or if someone else does, get them in the room pronto). So figure out where the impacts really lie and what you can do to reduce your customer’s footprint in ways they hadn’t considered. This might require asking heretical questions about whether the product should even exist in its current form or should be converted into more of a service.”
Winston believes the next generation’s Steve Jobs is likely to focus on sustainability since that’s where the largest challenges and business opportunities lie.
I like Winston’s thinking on “fast followers.” It’s far easier to be a follower than to take a lead, get out there, take a risk and make a market. That’s fine, as long as second place is somewhere, and not nowhere.
As well as sustainability and business leaders, maybe there’s also a lesson here for those who aspire to create public sector mutuals: to take a lead and show that there’s a better way.
By David Bicknell
Interesting report from Greenpeace on what it describes as “the energy choices that power Cloud Computing.”
“How dirty is your data?” is claimed by Greenpeace to the first ever report on the energy choices made by IT companies including Akamai, Amazon.com (Amazon Web Services), Apple, Facebook, Google, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo, and it says, highlights the need for greater transparency from global IT brands on the energy and carbon footprint of their Internet infrastructure.
In its highlights from the report, Greenpeace suggests:
• The $1 Billion (USD) Apple iData Center in North Carolina, expected to open this spring, will consume as much as 100 MW of electricity, equivalent to the electricity usage of approximately 80,000 homes in the U.S. or over a quarter million in the E.U.. The surrounding energy grid has less than 5 percent clean energy, with the remaining 95 percent coming from dirty, dangerous sources like coal and nuclear.
• Both Yahoo! and Google seem to understand the importance of a renewable energy supply, with Yahoo! siting most of its data centres near sources of renewable energy, and Google is directly signing power purchasing agreements for renewable energy and investing in solar and wind energy projects in many US states as well as Germany. Their models should be employed and improved upon by other Internet (“cloud computing”) companies.
• Facebook, one of the fastest growing and most popular destinations on the web, is unfortunately on track to be the most dependent cloud computing companies on coal powered electricity with over 53 percent of its facilities estimated to rely on coal to power the Facebook cloud.
In its executive summary, Greenpeace says: “Information Technology (IT) is disruptive. Largely for the better, IT has disrupted the way we travel, communicate, conduct business, produce, socialise and manage our homes and lives. This disruptive ability has the potential to reduce our dependence on dirty energy and make society cleaner, more efficient and powered renewably. But as we applaud the positive, visible impacts and measurable, game-changing potential of IT, we also need to pay attention to what’s behind the curtain.
“The ‘Cloud’ is IT’s biggest innovation and disruption. Cloud computing is converting our work, finances, health and relationships into invisible data, centralised in out-of-the-way storage facilities or data centres. This report seeks to answer an important question about this trend, currently underway across the globe: As Cloud technology disrupts our lives in many positive ways, are the companies that are changing everything failing to address their own growing environmental footprint?”
Key learnings from the report are that:
•Data centres to house the explosion of virtual information
currently consume 1.5-2% of all global electricity; this is growing
at a rate of 12% a year.
•The IT industry points to cloud computing as the new, green
model for our IT infrastructure needs, but few companies provide
data that would allow us to objectively evaluate these claims.
•The technologies of the 21st century are still largely powered by
the dirty coal power of the past, with over half of the companies
rated herein relying on coal for between 50% and 80% of their
energy needs.
•IT innovations have the potential to cut greenhouse gas
emissions across all sectors of the economy, but IT’s own
growing demand for dirty energy remains largely unaddressed by
the world’s biggest IT brands.
•There is a lack of transparency across the industry about IT’s own
greenhouse gas footprint and a need to open up the books on its
energy footprint.
•In emerging markets, where there is limited reliable grid electricity,
there is a tremendous opportunity for telecom operators to show
leadership by investing in renewable energy, but many are relying
on heavily polluting diesel generators to fuel their growth.
•Data centre clusters (Google, Facebook, Apple) are cropping up
in places like North Carolina and the US Midwest, where cheap
and dirty coal-powered electricity is abundant.
•IT companies are failing to prioritise access to clean and
renewable energy in their infrastructure siting decisions.
•Of the 10 brands graded, Akamai, a global content distribution
network, earned top-of-the-class recognition for transparency;
Yahoo! had the strongest infrastructure siting policy; Google &
IBM demonstrated the most comprehensive overall approach to
reduce its carbon footprint to date.
•Across the board, IT companies have thus far failed to commit to
clean energy in the same way they are embracing energy
efficiency, which is holding the sector back from being truly
green
Posted in Campaign4Change
Tagged Akamai, Apple, carbon footprint, Cloud, energy, environment, Facebook, Google, Greenpeace, Yahoo
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