AGILE Sustainability

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:

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 [email protected]
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: 

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 [email protected]
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:

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 [email protected]
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:

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 [email protected]
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 [email protected]
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 [email protected]
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 [email protected]
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 [email protected]
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 [email protected]
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