Eric Mackey – Delve Director of Industrial Design

Eric Mackey

Taylor Cone, Director of Innovation Enablement, Delve

Taylor Cone

Insights & Strategy

Design Strategy

Eric Mackey: We’re here today to talk about sustainability, the business of design, and how to shift perceptions of the relationship between the two within an organization. 
Taylor Cone: Let’s start by defining our terms. In <a href="https://www.delve.com/innovation-enablement" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">innovation enablement,</a> the word “innovation” can mean a million things. In your sphere, not just as Director of <a href="https://www.delve.com/services/design/industrial-design" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Industrial Design</a> at Delve but also as leader of our <a href="https://www.delve.com/sustainability-circular-economy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Sustainability</a> practice area, do you use the terms “sustainability,” “circular design,” and “regenerative design,” and how do you use them?

Eric Mackey: Sometimes people say “sustainability” in product development, when what they really mean is environmental impact. It’s important to clarify that sustainability is a business term that means more than just environmentalism. It means you're operating your business intentionally in a way that balances three things: environmental impact, social impact, and profit. When sustainability is mistakenly reduced to environmentalism, it can be off-putting because it sounds anti-business-growth. Fortunately, times are changing. We’re seeing significant momentum in better understanding what sustainability means in business.&nbsp;
 Circularity is a method. It is a massive shift in the way we design, develop products, and innovate, aimed at eliminating waste and pollution. Regenerative Design is one step higher than that. It's the idea that businesses should not only operate in a way that sustains their current state, but also find ways to improve the conditions outside. Currently, sustainability needs to be table stakes for design, regenerative design is where you have significant innovation opportunities.&nbsp;

2023 03 01 org transformation sustainable design inline1 sustainability definition

Taylor Cone: The way you just talked about sustainability and circular versus regenerative makes me think of the words fragile, resilient, and anti-fragile. Fragile is easily broken. Resilient is something that snaps back to how it was. And anti-fragile is something that gets better when it gets broken. It sounds like that would be regenerative design, versus the other two.&nbsp;
Eric Mackey: The term anti-fragile is used a lot in the sustainability world because we’re talking about building resiliency. That’s why sustainability has gotten so much traction currently. Not only because it's the right thing to do, but because when the pandemic hit, the companies that proved to be more resilient were those that were actively investing in and measuring their social and environmental impact. It proved to be better business.
Taylor Cone: This is something I've talked about a lot too: the danger of seeing sustainability solely as environmental impact and only using that word to mean environmentally sustainable. Any business&nbsp;that wants to succeed and thrive long-term must focus on being a sustainable business, not just environmentally sustainable.&nbsp;
Eric Mackey: This reminds me of the David Attenborough quote, “We have a finite environment—the planet. Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist.” 
Another way I think about this comes from Ray Anderson of Interface Carpet. He describes a circle with a square in it. He then questions which one is business and which one is the environment.

2023 03 01 org transformation sustainable design inline2 square circle

The perception, for too long, has been that environment is a small part of business, resources that fuel growth, and a risk to be managed. The reality, however, is that the environment is everything, and the company cannot exist without it. The problem is that we take this all for granted. Sustainability isn't a strategy, it’s everything you do, it's how you operate. It's what you do and why you do it. When we reduce it to a process or a single goal or part of a bigger goal, we’re missing the point. 
Taylor Cone: Like when you operate your business and then try to tack on “sustainability” later. Eric Mackey: Yes. Fortunately, we’re seeing more businesses start to move in the right direction. They’re dedicated to sustainability issues and working to align their future to it. 
<h2>What keeps businesses from adopting a sustainability mindset?</h2>
Taylor Cone: What do you think is preventing other business leaders from seeing it this way and operating their businesses accordingly?
Eric Mackey: Good question. I want to turn that question back on you. We can talk about sustainability and what's preventing leaders from moving in that direction, but I think the underlying question is much bigger. What do you think might be preventing leaders from adopting an innovation or change mindset?
Taylor Cone: Fair point. I think it ties in to one of the themes of our conversation so far, which is the long-term versus short-term mindset. From a sustainability standpoint, most businesses are being run today in an incredibly short-sighted way. We focus on the now and the very soon and tell ourselves, we'll figure out the later, later. 
In the innovation enablement space, we talk a lot about how challenging this mindset is. It's much harder to have creative freedom and space to experiment when you are compressed down to these deadlines, timelines, short-term thinking and a focus on profit. Profit happens more easily when you do safe things that involve less risk and less investment. So, I think one of the foundational pieces is shifting from a short term, profit-driven mindset to a longer-term, more spacious mindset of what is possible.

2023 03 01 org transformation sustainable design inline3 short term long term

Eric Mackey: What do you think are some of the barriers that prevent that shift from happening?
Taylor Cone: What comes to mind is what Elon Musk said back in 2018, when he wanted to take Tesla private after it was already public. He <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/08/elon-musk-wants-to-take-tesla-private--heres-what-it-means.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said,</a> “Being public subjects us to the quarterly earnings cycle that puts enormous pressure on Tesla to make decisions that may be right for a given quarter, but not necessarily right for the long-term." He believed that Tesla was at its best when focused on executing the company’s long-term strategy, rather than getting distracted by short-term goals.
I think that’s part of the answer. Free leaders from the need to focus on short-term profit, and being accountable to shareholders for every quarter. I'm not saying throw that away completely. I understand that business needs to be profitable. But we need to find a more balanced approach. We can do all the things we need to do to keep the lights on and the doors of our business open, while also investing in the future, right now. It’s time to stop saying, oh, we’ll get around to investing in the future someday.
Reminds me of something our fellow Delvian Jim Sack says about doing things right the first time: “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?” Similary, if you say you’ll get around to innovation (or sustainability) when you have time, the question becomes: how do you know you’ll “have time” later on?

Read our research report, <a href="https://www.delve.com/five-reasons-why-companies-fail-to-innovate" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Failure Modes in Innovation,</a> for more signs that failure modes may be blocking innovation in your organization.

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Enabling organizational transformation that supports sustainable design 
Eric Mackey: We’ve been talking about how short-term decision making is a big stumbling block in the way of sustainability, but it’s also related to the work you do in innovation enablement. You work with clients who want to develop an innovation mindset, but the reality is that these organizations are made up of individuals who report into a structure or system that doesn’t necessarily support change. 
Can you talk about what “innovation” means, what innovation enablement is about, and how you make change in a system that isn’t quite ready to take on “riskier thinking”?&nbsp;
Taylor Cone: Our team at Delve spent a lot of time exploring the definition of innovation, until we realized that defining the word was the wrong thing to focus on. We learned through our research that “innovation” is not a constant in terms of what it means and why it matters. It must be defined in context. You must understand what innovation means and why it is important, right now, to you and your organization. That is truly the only definition of innovation that matters.

We would be doing our clients a disservice if we had a generalized definition that we deployed for every organization. Once we understand what innovation means for a particular organization, once the vision and purpose are understood, we can move forward. 
Our innovation enablement work at Delve is not just about shifting mindsets or introducing new processes or methodologies. Rather, we redesign systems to enable innovation. First, we use our innovation assessment framework to determine which areas of an organization are set up to be innovative and which aren’t. From then on, innovation enablement is all about aligning everything within the organization to serve that purpose and to achieve that vision. 
Innovation mindsets and innovation processes can be stifled. A robust innovation system, as a foundation, is what matters. <h2>Challenging organizational leadership</h2>
Eric Mackey: It sounds like an important part of the work of innovation enablement needs to happen at higher levels in the organization first. I think that there's a parallel to sustainability there. If we don't have buy-in and activation from leadership, it’s hard to achieve the systemic change we want.&nbsp; 
Taylor Cone: I think that’s true. What methods have you seen to be effective in the sustainability space for enabling that mindset shift, and helping leaders see the light?

2023 03 01 org transformation sustainable design inline4 leaders actions leap forward

Eric Mackey: There are strategies you can employ that focus on resiliency and setting up appropriate goals and measurements and working towards them. It comes down to the business leadership understanding that the environment and society have real material value to the organization. In order to thrive, these siblings to profit must grow also. I think the biggest leaps forward are happening because leaders are starting to see a tangible business impact—they understand that it’s not about charity, it's about aligning the company mission to support itself. It's thinking in systems and understanding that actions you take to generate near-term profit should also support your long-term health. It’s about finding the right people to drive the right projects that are looking further ahead.&nbsp;
I think that if you look at the leaders who have historically been able to do it and those that are currently enacting big transformational change, what they do is demonstrate an ambitious goal and then empower their teams to go after it.
Taylor Cone: We’ve <a href="https://www.delve.com/insights/biggest-innovations-in-2022-that-influenced-product-design" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">talked before</a> about how Patagonia does a beautiful job of that. One of the <a href="https://www.delve.com/five-reasons-why-companies-fail-to-innovate" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">innovation failure modes</a> that stands in the way of an organization embracing sustainability is the lack of a clear and powerful vision. But when you have a clear purpose, like Patagonia, it becomes possible for the entire organization to align towards it. I’m curious about whether you think organizations are going far enough when it comes to putting a stake in the ground around sustainability. Aside from Patagonia, are we seeing many other organizations establishing that kind of bold, galvanizing vision?

2023 03 01 org transformation sustainable design inline5 clear purpose

Eric Mackey:&nbsp;This space is still so new, and every organization has its own circumstances. For now, in many companies, there is a latency gap between traditional ideals of business success and where we are headed: a business model that sees purpose beyond perpetual growth and profit. The work we need to do, as change agents,&nbsp;is to ease the pressure of transformation and make complex systems feel approachable so organizational leaders can take bolder action.
The next generation of leaders, Millennials who are just now starting to move into leadership positions, already <a href="https://www.kornferry.com/insights/this-week-in-leadership/millennials-purpose-generation" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">think differently about the purpose of business</a>. To them, business not only has a part in, but a responsibility to the planet and to society. Business can’t exist without the planet or people. If you treat your employees, your customers, and your stakeholders as if they’re resources, eventually, you’ll burn them out. It’s the same thing with the environment. If you’re constantly extracting from the environment but never replenishing or regenerating, you’ll eventually run out.

2023 05 15 DMI recap INLINE3

What influences a decision maker to choose managing what is over designing what could be? That, one could argue, is the role of design.

<h2>People are part of the environment, too</h2>
Taylor Cone: Conversations about sustainability tend to be very focused on the environment. What do you wish people understood about social sustainability? Eric Mackey: Sustainability is often treated as if it’s strictly a green-environmental thing. Well, people are part of the business environment too. Sustainability is about building a just and equitable society also. Business needs to look at who their products benefit and harm as well as who drives their growth internally.
Most Millennials started their careers during a very tough period, the recession that started around 2008. The recession hit Millennials hard, both in employment opportunity and early career wage generation. At the same time, we were experiencing rapid changes in technology that widened an equity gap while simultaneously empowering innovation in entrepreneurship. iPhones came out in 2007. There’s a wake to these two events just now hitting shore and we’re seeing the effects play out. It changed how we perceive work, the purpose of work, and the value of work.

2023 03 01 org transformation sustainable design inline6 people planet profit

This generation, and the following, recognizes what happens when you treat people like resources, like another finite material to drive business growth. Circularity is about keeping the material value in service as long as possible. Well, we understand that this principle also applies to how we treat people in organizations and communities. We know how important it is to invest in people. When people see that an organization supports not just their work life but their whole life, they will invest in the organization in turn, and we’ll end up with more resilient organizations. 

Speaking of people, let me ask you: do you think human-centered design is appropriate for innovation, knowing the system-level damages that the human-centered mindset has created?

Taylor Cone: I think it’s a short-sighted approach to innovation and design. Human-centered design prioritizes above all else the in-the-moment product or service experience that an individual has. It doesn’t think about the system. It leaves out the effect on communities and on the environment. 
We have to evolve from human-centered design to humanity-centered design, and from that to Earth-centered design or life-centered design. Human-centered design is a thing of the past. 
Any company that’s choosing innovation has the responsibility to not just prioritize the experience of the person using their product or service, but also to examine the impact that their product and business have on the rest of the community that person is part of.

2023 03 01 org transformation sustainable design inline7 well being good design

Eric Mackey: This is an important point, but I’d hesitate to pin the mistake on any one particular design philosophy. Designing for humanity is not new. The big change is how success is measured. It’s only fairly recently that we started to assess design and innovation purely in terms of market success. I think the pendulum has swung too far. Until we realize that “good design is good for business” and use humanity's well-being as our primary metric for determining what constitutes “good design,” we’re just supporting business-centered design. 
At the beginning of our conversation today, you mentioned that defining innovation was the wrong thing to focus on. I ask what the consequences will be if we do not. We need to ask ourselves if what we are doing really is innovative if it is modeled after systems that have driven such large social and environmental inequities. We need to ask if we are truly being innovative if we have not looked to alternative systems like circularity or regenerative innovation for growth.

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<h2>It’s Time to Change the Conversation</h2>
Taylor Cone: Our time is coming to a close. Any last thoughts? 
Eric Mackey: I look back on my career in innovation, and a career in change agency, and I look to the only thing that has remained constant. It’s the ability to continuously question what is right. To use a Mad Men quote, “If you don’t like what is being said, change the conversation.” We are at a pivotal moment in time, and it is the responsibility of innovators to change the conversation immediately.
Taylor Cone: Love that. I’ll borrow your phrasing and say that a theme I hear in our conversation today and in my career overall has been the importance of continuously questioning what is true. As innovators, it’s our responsibility to “see the water” (that we’re swimming in) – and to question it. A dear friend of mine once urged me to “create the future you want to live in.” Challenging what is is the first step to creating what could be.

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2023 03 01 org transformation sustainable design HERO

Eric Mackey, Delve’s former Director of Industrial Design, and Taylor Cone, Delve’s Head of Innovation Enablement, talk about the roadblocks that prevent organizations from embracing sustainability—and what it would take to effect change.

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Eric Mackey, Delve’s former Director of Industrial Design, and Taylor Cone, Delve’s Head of Innovation Enablement, talk about the roadblocks that prevent organizations from embracing sustainability—and what it would take to effect change.

Eric Mackey, Delve’s former Director of Industrial Design, and Taylor Cone, Delve’s Head of Innovation Enablement, talk about the roadblocks that prevent…

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Organizational Transformation That Supports Sustainable Design

Organizational Transformation That Supports Sustainable Design

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