Sustainability by design in product, service and experience

Sustainability has long been tracked and traced in supply chain. There has been some good work in business process, too. But, to date, there has been little focus on building it into our product, service and experience life cycles.

My perspective as a customer-focused, digital insight-to-value innovation expert, has informed my development of the Planet Experience (PX) framework. The framework acknowledges the importance of providing end-user value for the planet, in the same way that Customer Experience (CX) has been the focus of all successful digital innovation, business models and transformations of the last 20 years.

PX elevates the status of the planet in our sustainable success - just as CX elevated the status of customers. No longer is the planet something to exploit, it is something to build a relationship of mutual benefit with. Through the PX filter it is something to purposefully design a relationship of mutual benefit with.

In order to deliver great CX we have to have great data about customer needs in the context of their lives: Insight. Feeding this in, at every iteration - testing what we are making for the end user, with the end user - is as sure a route to success as we can hope for.

Coupled with the typical market, business and technical constraints of desirability, viability and feasibility, we have a framework for value innovation.

Now we must find the equivalent for delivering great PX.

Viability and feasibility are adjusted by focus on PX. But what are they, and desirability, informed by? Where do we get our PX insight. And how do we make the acquisition of that PX insight affordable and fast enough to keep pace with rapid iterative product/service/experience development life cycles?

Of course, the voice of the customer - the CX data - is a strong indicator of what they will find acceptable vs what you plan to do for/with/to the planet. And it will be an important validation point which can be included in the kind of anthropological research conducted to great effect with platforms such as UserTribe.

In addition we must now add a way of answering the business questions about impact on the planet with data that goes beyond the human response - accessing the potential risk too/ impact on/ benefits for the ecosystem. 

For this we must access scientific expertise/research - delivered in the bite-sized time frames of agile and rapid iterative product life cycles - and framed in direct response to the relevant business-impact questions. That is, we must provide the business interface to the scientific expertise.

This is precisely where we have now reached with Planet Experience. The concept is in place and we are ready to test with pioneering prospective clients.

If you and your business are ready to lead the way in building sustainability into your products, services and experiences - placing PX on the same pedestal you would CX - step forward and be ready to lead.

Analysis by PwC in 2018 showed while 72% of companies mention the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in their annual reporting, only 27%, to date, include them in their business strategy. What that says is that they value sustainability - but struggle to make it part of their business as usual.

PX and PX Insight is a way to build planet positivity into everything you  make and do - with these key business benefits:

1. In acting fast - being proactive - you gain market leadership and get ahead of legislation.
2. You attract and retain customers, talent, investment.
3. Drive creative innovation.
4. Reduce risk to supply chain.
5. Cut energy costs.
6. Cut raw materials costs.
7. Cut water costs.
8. Cut waste disposal costs.
9. Savings fund transformation costs.
10. Sustains the eco-system in which you wish to seek to continue to generate profits.

Explore PX here.

Photo by Bill Oxford on Unsplash