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Date
Let's say you are in the market for a new desktop computer.
And...when I say new, I mean "new" in the sense that it is one of the first ever.
How about these headliner features for your new machine:
-
16Kb of RAM, expandable all the way up to 64Kb
-
CPU running at 4.77 MHz (that's Mega, not Giga)
-
A cassette port and an internal 160 Kb floppy disk drive
-
Built-in speaker
-
Equipped with the BASIC computer programming language
Those are some of the key features of the new IBM 5150 Personal Computer!
And all of this for a starting price of only $4400 (in 2013 dollars)!
So - are you buying?
Probably not (unless it's for collectability reasons).
Why do we mention this in a blog regarding sustainability and project management?
Simple. It has to do with innovation, with inspiration, and with the fact that if you do things right, the environment - as a stimulus - falls to the wayside in comparison to the end result in terms of innovation.
So the analogy of the PC is meant to help take away the 'sticker shock' (pun intended) of the Tesla Model S - an all electric vehicle, costing about $75,000, which just received the following quote from Consumer Reports:
"it's not only the best electric car we've tested, it's now our top-rated model overall".
So that's the point, isn't it? We can - and should - use sustainability as a trigger for innovation. But it doesn't mean that everything having to do with sustainably-developed products has to mean sacrifice and skimpiness. The Tesla is luxurious, comfortable, spacious, and loaded with features. Sustainability can be a driver (pun again intended) but does not have to be the rationale for purchasing. The Tesla is an example of a product that in-and-of-itself is just better than its carbon-hogging peers. We need more of these innovations.
And yes, it's expensive. But that brings us back to the IBM PC. Go back up again and look at the features and price. When it first came up, only the extremely wealthy (or extremely geeky, or both) were buying that machine. Same for the Tesla.
But look what happened to the great-great-grandchildren of the IBM PC. Witness the fact that your $50 MP3 player or even perhaps your coffeemaker has more computer power than that PC, and you can buy a Chromebook for $199. The $75,000 price of a luxury sports Tesla can easily become a price that is more than competitive with combustion-engine sedans. If not ourselves, our kids will be driving cars like this (carefully, we hope).
It will take projects and project managers to get that price down - to design more workaday vehicles that you and I may drive - but it will happen. And it's going to take sustainability thinking built in to our discipline of project management to keep the spark of innovation alive and to keep electrigfying products like the Tesla Model S coming down the road.
The move to electirc vehicles is a good thing for the planet. Yes, there is debate over the fact that this simply "moves the problem", but we're on the side that says it's much better to have the car run on electricity because we can innovate more easily on making power generation (in general) more renewable, and not so easily when each vehicle is a small fossil-fuel power plant itself. In fact, each combustion-engine car generates about 20 pounds of C02 for every gallon it consumes. And transportation consists of 29% of all human-generated CO2. We just blogged about great successes in the ICT industry, which makes up only 2%. So improvements in the area of transportation are more than 10 times more effective in impact - clearly showing that innovation in this area is key.
We at EarthPM have been working in this area ourselves, as we've described on previous blog posts, running workshops for the ECOCAR2 program of the US Department of Energy and General Motors. We look forward to more collaborations in which project management contributes to innovations that electrify us and improve our lot - and, oh-by-the-way contribute to a more sustainable world.
Note: the inspiration for this posting came from a great opinion piece in today's Boston Globe by Tom Keane.
Posted
by
Richard Maltzman
on: May 21, 2013 09:17 AM |
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