 |
Angela Nahikian is the director of Global Environmental Sustainability for Steelcase Inc. The key to the company's sustainability practices -- and its design strategy -- lies in its approach, she says. And that approach may come as a surprise to some people who have tracked of this industry leader and its nearly 100-year history of innovation. Angela joins us to today to talk about her company and the concept of "radical evolution."
Leslie Guevarra: Angela, thank you so much for being with us today.
Angela Nahikian: Thank you, Leslie. Happy to be here.
LG: Would you talk to us about sustainability practices in business? It's a huge issue and Steelcase has long been an innovator in this area and in fact an industry leader. Tell us, what are the big things? What should we be keeping in mind?
AN: Well, I think when it comes to sustainable business practices, it begins with a curiosity, and I think the insatiable appetite for more information and more understanding. We like to consider ourselves as students, curious students of sustainability, and I think that if you keep that mindset and hold on to that mindset, there are just endless opportunities from a business and a business model perspective.
Approaching it from that direction, we really are very focused on not only the environmental sustainability aspects of our products, which have been a significant investment for us and a significant focus over the years but particularly in the past five to 10 years, and understanding the chemistry of our products, which is a significant learning and an ongoing learning for us. So, we begin there, and invest in understanding the lifecycle impacts of our products and then (in) ways that we can ensure that our products have a second life through either recycling or reuse.
With those three platforms in mind, that's the beginning of all of the thinking that we do around our product development side around sustainability. But I think more and more, we're interested in -- what are the innovation opportunities and how do we start truly braiding and integrating the social, environmental and business model aspects into total design solutions?
We're thinking about sustainability as being the ultimate systems design problem: How do we weave these three elements together to really innovate? Because I think that's where we believe the future of sustainability opportunities will be -- as the innovation opportunities provided by thinking about it differently.
LG: It seems that there is not only a greater interest but a greater urgency surrounding all these ideas. Why is that? Why is that happening now?
AN: Well, I think certainly there has been a lot of evidence on the environmental side from a climate perspective that there is an absolute sense of urgency. We have a lot to make up for and we all have to have the sense of urgency. But at the same time, I think that (with) especially society at large, large corporations, large businesses -- there really has to be an evolutionary aspect to sustainability and those things are intentioned. So, what it requires is this sense of urgent iteration, this radical evolution -- if you will -- approach to sustainability that is really going to win. I think a lot of people understand that now and are starting to see ways in which they can have that radical mindset, but evolve in a way that sustains business and standards of living and society expectations.
LG: Are there things that Steelcase is doing along these lines that you can share with us?
AN: This is a different way of thinking about sustainability: How do you, for instance, begin to integrate populations that are not, maybe, participating in the economy, and how do you design products and delivery mechanisms to help those folks become part of the economy? Those would be some of the things that we're starting to think about. In terms of delivering solutions, we're not close enough to talk about some of those things at this point, but we certainly are thinking about them.
I think that we have some examples of stretching the boundaries of sustainability that we could share, one being the research that we're doing in the growth of forests. We have a research forest adjacent to our wood manufacturing facility here in Grand Rapids. It's a collaboration with the forestry service, Purdue University and a number of other universities and organizations across the country. What we're trying to do is to understand how to more effectively grow the kinds of wood stock and wood materials that we need to manufacture our product.
We are looking at ways in which you might grow trees to accelerate the growth and still maintain the integrity of the soil, as well as to be able to grow more uniform trees with more uniform growth patterns that makes them more conducive to veneer. Those kinds of investments are outside the day-to-day running of our business but really extend upstream to how the materials are grown that gets us ... in the knowledge base around that. It gets back to that curiosity aspect and this desire to learn. And if we do that, we'll be able to produce better product and we'll be able to do that more sustainably.
In our materials chemistry practice, we're learning things every day of the materials and we're seeing the limitations of technology in material science. As much as that is a fast track advancement in research area, materials, we are seeing limitations, so we're collaborating with others at the front end and the forefront of material science to see what we might be able to do to solve some of those problems. And those are just the sort of day-to-day activities here that stretch beyond the standard internal business issues.
LG: You mentioned limitations. What types of limitations are we talking about -- simply the extent that we can manipulate the materials as they are today?
AN: Yes, I think that's a great part of it. There's a certain level of performance that a lot of the materials that exist today exhibit and a lot of those performance attributes come from materials that are materials of concern. Some of those would be categorized as red materials or even black materials. The materials that are known or suspected to have some impact at some level on humans and the environment. We have made a choice as a company: We do not want to participate in those materials. We do not want to interface with those materials. And so when we design new products, we're doing everything we can to avoid those materials. We're also going back in and even eliminating them from existing product. And those create challenges, because the performance attributes -- let's say in an adhesive -- posed by some of the materials, make those adhesive very effective at doing their job but they are not ones that we want to invest in because of the negative sort of side effects. So we're working with some of the original material suppliers to be able to see how we might create a new sort of adhesive, or a new generation of material, that will still have the same performance attributes, but do so with materials that support human and environmental health.
LG: Now that is a challenge, finding substitutes for the things that work so well, but perhaps in a greater sense, really didn't work at all when you look at it in the long run and the impacts.
AN: Well, that gets back to the systems design problem: That it just depends on what you include in your system as performance requirements, and we certainly would include supporting human and environmental health in performance requirements.
LG: The sustainability of report that the company issued in the past year, it talked about 2009 being the year of reinvention. What can you tell us about that?
AN: Well, I think that that can happen on a number of levels and is happening within the company. We're reinventing some of our systems ... What we're doing is we're really investing heavily in our data infrastructure and have a long-term project where we're looking at ways we can connect some of the databases throughout our organization to be able to deliver holistic reporting on very specific products for customers. Those are some of the investments that we're making and reinventions that were engaged in right now.
I think that it comes back to some of the things that we talked about before: really looking at ways we could reinvent our business model's delivery systems, mechanisms that we use as a company, to be able to deliver, better, on our sustainability promise from an environmental perspective as well as a social and business perspective, and to deliver more value to the customer at the end of the day.We're looking at all aspects: Infrastructure being one; delivery mechanisms being another; and some of the things that talked about before -- trying to integrate some of the social aspects as well and think about ways in which we could use our assets as a company to deliver greater value to society, as well as our customers.
LG: Your corporate responsibility report really underscores, as our chat does today, that all this is part of Steelcase's DNA. Other firms, how do they get started with this, or at least enhance these type of processes? Especially in the type of environment that we have today. I'm talking about the economic environment. It is incredibly challenging right now.
AN: One of the things I mentioned, we're learning every day ways that we can improve our own performance, but we're also seeking to learn from others in addition to all of the internal learning that we're pursuing. And I think that's one of the things: Do your best to learn from others, others' mistakes as well as some others' successes. Find a peer group, and find people who are like minded, are interested in pursuing the same sorts of things, and have the same aggressive pace you might be interested in.
I think the other thing is, really, there are many lenses that you can view sustainability through. Especially in times that are difficult economically, one of the benefits that you can deliver through sustainability to your company is a leaner, more effective organization: One that utilizes material resources effectively; one that reduces, not only the impact on the environment, but impact on your bottom line and your top line. And when you're using resources better and you're offering better value and better service to your customer, that's going to come back to you as a business. More often than not, we have found the sustainable choice is the better business choice from a cost structure perspective and certainly delivering greater customer value.
I think often sustainability, and environmental sustainability in particular, is thought of as a philanthropic effort and that there is a sacrifice that either customers or the company must make. In fact, we're not finding that to be the case.
LG: Are there other points you'd like to share?
AN: The whole movement of a company toward a more sustainable business model, a lot of folks would look at that as though it's an effort that surrounds a collection of tactics and strategies -- and the absolutely is that -- but at the bottom of it all, it's about culture change and enabling the organization to do things differently than they've done before and encouraging different ways of thinking. So, I think that often that part may be underestimated, just the investment in your culture, the investment in education and training and the encouragement of new ideas and new ways of doing things.
That's very much a cultural attribute. That's something we're at work on every day here at Steelcase to continue to strengthen and build on ... and I think one of the things that does is to demonstrate to your employees, and your customers as well, the level of commitment and congruency that you're trying to achieve in your decisionmaking.
One of the things that we did last year, we decided that we cared about renewable energy and promoting an advocating for renewable energy. And although we were doing a lot of things inside of our company to minimize the energy consumption of our company, we decided to invest in a wind farm. People would say, "What connection does that have to your day-to-day business?"
Well, it does. There are some connections that it has to our business, but probably the biggest benefit of that investment -- which was to make that commitment to financing the wind farm through the purchases of all of renewable energy credits that come from that wind farm -- was it allowed it to be built and will allow another renewable energy source to be created somewhere else because of that investment. I think what that said to people -- and it was very surprising to us because we didn't do it for those reasons -- was that we are, in fact, serious about creating their future and participating in that directly with our company, but also through investments that are unrelated to their day-to-day operations. I think those kinds of gestures can demonstrate to your employee base, as well as your customers, that you are, in fact, interested in advancing renewable energy and sustainable waste of manufacturing and operating as a society.
LG: We're talking about that wind farm in Panhandle, Texas; eight turbines.
AN: Yes. Eight turbines. The Wege Wind Energy Farm. We named it after Peter Wege. He is a philanthropist, but he is also a member of one of the original founding families of Steelcase. He has really dedicated his life to sustainability, and he's dedicated his resources to advancing sustainability aims in terms of water, education and all the dimensions of sustainability that really are critical to realizing, I think, what we all hope will be a different future for our kids. He is really, not only an inspiration to people within our company, but certainly toa lot of people outside of our company.
LG: This wind farm can power as many as 3,000 homes in that area, right?
AN: Yes, it's estimated to generate that much and also that is about 20 to 25 percent of our annual electric energy consumption. It was a very fitting investment for us.
LG: That's a key number, 25 percent.
AN: Yes. That's our footprint reduction goal by 2012, which is our 100th birthday.
LG: Right, in time for the century mark. Great.
AN: Absolutely. We figured what better way to celebrate, right, than to reduce our footprint by 25 percent. In fact, in some areas, we've already reduced it that much. In other areas, we're still working on it, but from an operations standpoint, were really pleased so far with the progress and that's a real credit to all of our folks in operations and all of our product development folks who are paying close attention to how we develop products and how we manufacture them.
LG: Thank you very much for being with us today. We appreciate everything that you shared.
AN: Well, thank you and I just want to say before I leave that I think that events like "Greener By Design" and any forums where people can share ideas and swap strategies in an effort to advance this work as a whole, regardless of the company -- it's necessary and it's important to have these forums. So, thank you, "Greener By Design" for sponsoring and hosting one.
LG: Angela, thanks so much.
AN: Thank you.