[Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from a podcast interview Leslie Guevarra conducted with Rand Waddoups, senior director of Business Strategy and Sustainability at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. To read the full transcript, or to listen to or download the podcast, see "Wal-Mart's Journey Toward Sustainability and Greater Value."]
Rand Waddoups: One of the best things about sustainability is that as soon as you start into it, you realize that it's impossible to know everything. It's impossible to truly be an expert in sustainability because it's huge. And so what you do is you immediately start to reach out to more and more people, and you realize the number of stakeholders that want to help you in this space -- non-governmental organizations, the government, industry organizations, other suppliers, your own people who are really excited about this topic.
All of these people start coming to you and saying, "Wow, we can go make a difference like this, and I've got ideas, and we can do this together." That openness of dialogue has really changed the game for us, and really, that's how we're staying ahead as it relates to sustainability, as it relates to a lot of our business decisions today. We are innovating differently than we've ever done before, because we get to hear from our stakeholders, and they teach us, and they give us new perspectives that really are advantageous to our business.
Leslie Guevarra: This sounds so much more collaborative than the traditional business model. Is this the way business will be going entirely, or is this simply the sustainability core?
RW: You know, I can't help but think that this is the new model for how business will be done, and I don't think by any means was it a model that Wal-Mart created, or anything like that. I would never say that the credit is ours for it, but I really believe that this networking style with the way the world has become so flat -- as you know, some very smart authors of recent months like Thomas Friedman have said because of the flatness of the earth, because of the fact that the connections between people are so much better than ever before this ability to learn from anyone, anywhere at any time and -- oh, by the way, do it with extremely mobile devices where it's no longer hard for me to learn this stuff -- it's changing the game.
It's changing the game, one, because we can be much more collaborative, and we can learn from one another, but two, because I think the customer, the general public, is beginning to expect a lot more transparency, and that transparency in how you do business and why you do business that way is going to make it so that people feel much more comfortable sharing.
A good example of late is -- two good examples, actually -- is Patagonia, and the way that they set out
their Footprint Chronicles. If you haven't seen this I'd recommend you go take a look at them -- or
SC Johnson, in the last couple of weeks they announced that they actually now have a website up where you can see every ingredient in the chemicals they sell. And just a couple of days ago,
Lay's announced that they were going to start telling you where their bags of chips are coming from and where the potatoes were farmed.
This ability to see your product and to be able to see the stakeholders that are in the chain of your product is really -- it's game changing, and it's making it so that we have an opportunity to collaborate more openly. It's also making it so that we all learn better from one another.
Rand Waddoups is a featured speaker at Greener By Design 2009, which runs through Wednesday in San Francisco.
