Sunshine Coast Heads up Innovation and GreenXTalks and what a show!

This week I have been out to two great events. The first was the Power of Innovation and Design Thinking in Business at the Innovation Centre run by the 4556 Buderim Chamber of Commerce and the University of the Sunshine Coast.?

4 panellists, Retha Scheerpers, Christine Brennan, Colin Graham and Kym Cousins took us through their thoughts and insights on design led thinking and how we can build an innovation culture.?

The crux of it came down to the fact that thinking differently, from a problem solving perspective is critical to the success and evolution of our businesses.?

It is not news that marketing 101 is all about how you tell a specific customer how you solve their curly problems. That has been how we have marketed (or have known we should be marketing) for aeons.?

The difference I see, is not in the fact that we need to create desire & interest, we have known that education based marketing has been a good lead magnet for years, but the key difference is in the process and how we collaborate with our colleagues and contractors to move towards an objective that both delivers innovation, value and the desired outcome.

Innovation is the maintainable application of good new ideas and or methods.

When the panel was asked what their tips would be to ensure that design led thinking was used in business to help to innovate some of their comments included things like;-

• Having the courage to question the status quo as a team member.
• As a leader being capable of making space to hear good ideas from within the team and giving staff the autonomy and platform from which to suggest ideas.
• Seeing your product or service from a customer lens and reverse engineering the process of solving their problem.

Interestingly it was more to do with the human aspect of how we approach innovation more than why we should innovate. The message was clear, in order to design well, you need to think well, think as a team in true collaboration and allow conversation to be the focus and then create processes that are maintainable and sustainable in order to succeed.?

It was a great event and one that certainly got me thinking differently. #unisunshinecoast #4556buderimchamber?

Then on Wednesday I attended the GreenXTalks, now to say that I was pretty excited about attending this would have been an understatement. I had been given the ticket from Megyn Carpenter from Cleantech, who was the brilliant Mastermind behind the talks and to whom I am very grateful. What a gift she gave me. I honour her gift with this synopsis (long it may be)?

We listened to a plethora of brilliant minds discuss 4 key topics.?

1. Eco Tourism
2. Green Finance
3. Sustainable Procurement
4. Climate Innovation

Stewart Moore from Earth Check - (a sustainability certification and program that is specifically built for tourism businesses, destinations, governments and developers to use to measure their impact), gave us a brief history of our sustainability journey and informed us that since 1992 and the Rio Agenda 21 we have been on an official trajectory towards being more sustainable. Collectively our sustainable practices have increased but the only way to understand the impact is through assessment and review - the metrics matter.?

When the Heads of State and Government and High Representatives, met at the United Nations Headquarters in New York from 25-27 September 2015, history was made as a full set of 17 goals known as the SDG’s were decided upon. These goals help us frame our sustainable practices and allow us to collectively work towards achieving these important targets.

He gave us the understanding that Metrics are Mission Critical and that we absolutely MUST measure to manage. Leaving us with the little nugget that celebrating our wins helps us to strive forwards, it was a great segue into Andrew Eaves Brown (Head of Economic Development at the Sunshine Coast Council) talk on Eco Tourism on the Sunshine Coast who also mentioned that sustainable practices in our local businesses should be celebrated.?

Sustainability is a very human topic, we have created the advancement of climate change and as such, we are solely responsible for managing its effect and slowing its rollout, but in order for humans to “buy into” creating change, the celebration part is obviously critical, as critical as the metrics that guide us, as we also found out from Amanda Pummer from Tourism Noosa that “Data is King''. However, being conscious and responsible enough as a species to get on with the job without expecting the grand reward is also vital to the success of our sustainable planet. Dr Clinton Schultz spoke to us about respect and reciprocity, that we should be capable of helping, giving and mutually exchanging without asking ‘what’s in it for me’. I believe that celebration and financial reward are separate and should be deemed as such. Celebration is an emotion, it is a rejoice, Money is an emotionless result of a trade. Different.?

Living on the Sunshine Coast is an absolute pleasure and as we hurtle towards 2032 and the Brisbane Olympics we need to get our stage ready for the world to compete, play, visit and scale, which means a whole lot more reciprocity needs to happen. As we are now deep into Olympic planning stage there are a lot of new projects on the rise.?Andrew Eaves Brown from the Sunshine Coast Council, informed us about a number of key initiatives taking place on the Sunshine Coast that some of us had no idea about. For example, did you know that there is a section of Yandina that is a floodplain? It consists of 5000 Hectares of wetlands that require management. The council is working to adapt this area known as the “Blue Heart” into a beautiful wetland and mangrove area. But the most important part about this is the reason why. Did you know that mangrove forests sequester 7 times more carbon than terrestrial forests. More mangroves please!

Our regional stage will be part of the Olympics, it is a very exciting time for us as an area. We will be part of the road cycling events as 265 kms of our coastal and hinterland roads will be used in the event, along with the marathon and walking events in and around Alex Headland. We will see the development of a mountain bike centre at Parklands which opens up Nambour to be a bit of a mountain biking hub - what an opportunity for cafes and potential new bike shops and we get the kitesurfing as well and so our beaches and ocean will be well looked after. As an official biosphere we have the recognition, scope and reason to drive eco tourism here, and with the support of the 2032 games and the funding that comes from us winning this bid, we will be able to leverage off of this like never before.?

Being a key part of the games means we do have more funding and increased scope to improve our economic appetite and what better way than to put food and beverages made in our region on the menu. With the help of organisations like FAN and the Queensland Food Trail this process is already well underway. To build on this, it would be remiss of us not to educate and encourage our youngest residents to understand and champion the adaptation of our food choices in the home by teaching them about eating both locally and seasonally.?

Can we use the Olympics, the fantastic food and beverage offerings and our range of excellent educational facilities to springboard this to grow our region sustainably and gastronomically? Honestly, our region has more sustainable innovation than we realise. Did you know that we have the world's most automated vertical farm system company right here in Yandina??

With innovation and adaptation comes cost and so we moved into the realm of sustainable finance. Everything has a cost and not everything can be government funded. Mike Duggan spoke to us about one of the organisations he has been the CEO of - Orange Sky, what a concept!?

Orange Sky allows people in remote and marginalised areas to maintain their health by providing them with showers and washing machines and dryers, so they have clean clothes and bedding, this not only helps them as humans but also reduces the number of diseases therefore reducing the impact on local regional GP’s and small remote hospitals who generally struggle to stay on top of their patients numbers in the first place.?

So if we think about this from a financial perspective and from a philanthropic perspective, if we all believe that we need to give back (reciprocity) to help our fellow humans to survive, and thrive along with our suffering planet then we need to choose where we funnel our funds into carefully, not all charities have the same outcomes. Maybe choose a charity close to home, one that will help us make our region shine even greater and be a socially responsible choice at the same time.?

This means that the idea of social impact modelling becomes important - how do we actually choose which NFP’s to work with and support??Which organisations align with your mission and purpose, in fact - ask yourself if you have a mission and purpose that reflects how your company views and manages sustainability.?If not - get onto it. It’s all becoming really relevant.?

Some of the things we can do to understand our baseline from a corporate/ commercial sustainability standpoint is to measure our carbon footprint, so how do we do that??

Pollyanna Darling from Carbon Positive Australia gave us a lot of food for thought, she fabulously pointed us towards their online free calculator that we can ALL use to establish just how much carbon we create. In fact I’ll issue a carbon challenge for us all to log in, measure where we are at and carry out a few key actions to work towards reducing it. Together we stand.?

There are a number of great tech companies working on other solutions that help us to measure where we are at as well. One just about to move into a bigger launch phase is GreenKPI - this one is all about the actions we take to make the difference because essentially without action the metric is pointless. One for the architects and designers out there is Hero Software which taps into the NatHERS system of issuing certification towards the new build or major renovation. These companies exist, they are on the precipice of greatness and will shape our future. Our future is measurable and Data is King (thanks Amanda Pummer- Plastic Free Noosa).

With the growth of our region being a major topic, it is likely that the next topic is who gets to supply all the product to these major scale projects. This is the sole reason I joined the Sunshine Coast Olympic Taskforce on the business committee because this question is hot on the lips of all of my clients. It was also hot on the lips of Brett Hazlett from Global GreenTag International as he spoke to us about meeting specific standards in order to be able to supply to the Olympics. Did you know that the 2032 Games will be the first climate positive summer Olympics? So if you want to supply into the games you need to be a net zero supplier and that means a whole lot of measuring, planning and offsetting needs to be thought about and actioned.?

Now that doesn’t mean that a company that uses lots of diesel run plant and equipment cannot be part of the games, it just means that those companies must offset their emissions using accredited schemes like GreenFleet to ensure that they are putting back what they take out. It’s a very circular thing and something that Dr Nicole Garofano from Planet Ark discussed with us.?

Did you know that the Australian Government from all sectors spends 16% of our GDP on procurement every year - that is huge! To me that screams ‘let’s make sure that most purchases are well thought out and from companies that have their sustainability actions all set up and metrics there to prove it’.?

Perhaps we need to rethink how we design, using the thoughts from Tuesday's Innovation presentation at the Innovation centre on Design Led Thinking - it is about thinking differently, and collaborating to design with longevity, value adding and adaptation in mind. Dr Garafano concurred that we need to design products differently, we need to design so that products are designed to be in use longer, have a higher value and create jobs and utilise our skills as a service. She gave us an example from Phillips about creating products as a service- they sell the Lumens from their LED lights opposed to the hardware (the lights) and they service these lumens as if they might be a piece of software. Think about how else we might change our thinking to adapt to that strategy.?

Dr Garafano also spoke about the importance of Eco Tags and why understanding the cradle to cradle certification of how products are made and what happens at the end of its “life” is critical. It was supported by Brett Hazlett and his Green Star/ LEED discussion where his focus is about ensuring that what is procured for our major scale projects IS and always will be sustainable through accreditation and certification. For how else will we police this if we do not assess origins, process and lifecycle.????????

The concept of Future proofing your business by being sustainable was a key takeaway from Heidi Cooper, the CEO of CCIQ, her presentation was from the heart and honestly epic!. Did you know that currently, only 42% of the Sunshine Coast engages in sustainable activity. We can definitely improve this. To help with this, CCIQ has a great program called EcoBiz that measures a businesses water, waste and energy outputs and helps to identify key drivers to reduce those outputs which actually reduce the investment in those services but also have a byproduct of making the business more sustainable. What a great concept. Read more about this and more here in a previous blog.?

Interestingly both export and growth markets are asking how sustainable a business is, so if we are needing to prove our sustainability actions by certification or regulation in order to secure future work - then the process to starting this must be in the forefront of all businesses minds and strategic plans.?

Watch out for the CCIQ Maturity Report soon to be issued.?

You know we have a heap of really great people on our coastline. Some of these people are incredible, humble, beautiful souls who do so much and expect so little in return. One of those spoke to us, she was fabulous. Dr Alexandra Campbell is a PHD student who is a little more than obsessed by seaweed, so much so that she started a seaweed squad with her fellow grad students.?

The important fact to note here is that Seaweed can help reduce climate change by the sequestration of carbon and if fed to cattle can also eliminate methane from our cows. Think about that for a moment- seaweed can do this. Plus it attracts all manner of marine life to our region. The problem is that in the 1970’s we had a veritable seaweed forest and now as the temp is slowly on the rise, we now have a more tropical kind of reef system here. In order to bring back the seaweed forests and help us to sequester more carbon on the coast we need to address this. So, Dr Campbell and her PHD mates have put the call out to help literally plant “Craybies” onto ocean bed mats to start a cycle of natural Crayweed beds. Even if you are not into diving you can still help by supporting this work, plus she is a delight to listen to.?

Ex Firefighter and sustainable energy champion, Nathan Begley announced that he has funds to help fund the installation of solar panels through his complete energy solution company called Upstream Energy which aims to deliver zero energy costs within 5 short years . Their core business is investing in quality solar systems, installing them on the rooftops of Australian businesses at their cost.I don’t know about you but I know a bunch of businesses that should be taking him up on this.?

Natalie Issacs took us on a journey of how she is part of a conscious shift, moving from her take, make, waste cycle to now enviromental activist and owner of 1 Million Women to help change the perspective, narrative and outcomes that will help to drive climate action and avoid over consumption. She was a bit of a power house and just goes to show that everyone has the capacity to change, if we change the narrative just one small story can make a huge amount of difference.?

With such an incredible wealth of knowledge right here on our doorstep it makes me proud to think that I live in this wonderful, prosperous and sustainability focused location. From here things can only get better.?

I guess the question is, after all of these great stories and after listening to the wonderful presentations is - are we willing to make the change? I am, are you?

In closing - Megyn Carpenter, can I just applaud you for a moment, let's all stand and clap this woman in. Outstanding. I cannot wait for next years GreenXTalks - Long may it reign