Know Your Own Bone – Nonprofit Marketing & Online Engagement

What will dinosaurs and companies that are not integrating “green” practices have in common in the next century or so? Extinction.

How’s that for a call to action for slow-movers.

Earth, Inc,  a soon-to-be released book by Gregory Unruh published by Harvard University Press, has a simple bottom line: in order to be sustainable and remain competitive, companies must utilize nature’s own rules. Corporations like S.C. Johnson, UPS, Kodak, Coca-Cola, and Clorox are leading the way in creating material product processes that mimic nature– and are (nearly) as earth-friendly. If companies are unable to follow suit in order to leverage sustainable practices across product lines, these companies will fade away. The world keeps moving, after all.

This book is particularly enlightening for those who are nonbelievers in the power of for-profits to evoke large-scale, positive change. Indeed, in the examples Unruh mentions, these changes must be done by these kinds of companies. By utilizing processes similar to nature, companies are uncovering ways to make a buck by incorporating sustainable practices.

Though grounded in sustainable profits, the book reinforces popular lessons in innovation that  hold true across industries:

1) The best way is often the most simple way (In the book, this is  materials parsimony): In Earth, Inc, we learn that the bulk of earth’s productivity is composed from only carbon, hydrogeny, oxygen, and nitrogen (which form animo acids, proteins, and sugars). That is nearly all that nature needs to create almost everything we know of life.  The first rule in creating sustainable profits is to create materials parsimony— or, to keep it simple.

2) The power of constraints (In the book, this is creating sustainable product platforms that fit into the five constraints Unruh identifies): The idea that the only way out of a box is to invent your way out holds true here. Companies that can work within the five rules for sustainable profits (materials parsimony, power autonomy, value cycles, sustainable product platforms, and function over form), are truly the most innovative because they are leading the way in creating greener businesses that also turn a profit.

Earth, Inc. makes you think about the story of stuff on the production level. I don’t think about Patagonia products the same way. The book is short, to the point, and easy to read. As an individual with interest in sustainable profits but no former knowledge of production terms, there were times when I had to read sentences twice. Even in these cases, Unruh uses terms in a way that makes their meaning easy to unravel.

This video has long become a youtube favorite, but it’s worth including here. It gives you an overview of the issues facing the world of non-sustainable profits, and provides a good basis for understanding the need for practices uncovered in Earth, Inc.

If you produce goods or want to know more about the future of the product cycles of items you consume, read this book. Even if you aren’t extremely interested in these things, you should pick up the book. At the very least you will learn something about the direction in which the world is moving… Just read it if you want to keep up.

I owe a big thanks to Brazen Careerist’s Penelope Trunk, who spotted this book, recognized it was up my alley,  and Harvard Business Review- who sent an advance reader’s copy my way.