AGILE Sustainability

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.

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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 [email protected]
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.

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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 [email protected]
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.

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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 [email protected]
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.

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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 [email protected]
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.

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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 [email protected]
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.

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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 [email protected]
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.

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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 [email protected]
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.

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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 [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