2Sustain

Greening the supply chain is no longer an esoteric thought problem reserved solely for contemplation by your company’s CSR team. Instead, it’s a concept that is quickly becoming more and more mainstream –and more and more fundamental to overall business success. Still, I’ll be the first to admit, there’s much work to be done, and many companies are uncertain about how to move forward on this front. Sometimes progress seems slow, and at times, I can’t help but wonder, “What will it take to create a new accepted paradigm for supply chain sustainability?”

Apparently, they’re pondering the same question over at Supply Chain Management Review, where special contributor Dennis Gawlik recently posted an interesting think-piece that delves headfirst into this topic. Titled “The Green Supply Chain Needs an Apollo Program,” Gawlik’s article builds on the premise first established by Congressman (U.S. Rep.- Washington) and author Jay Inslee in his book, Apollo’s Fire, Igniting America’s Clean Energy Economy. In the book, Inslee makes the case for a unifying national vision of a clean energy economy, a vision that would fire-up innovation the way that NASA’s Apollo program sparked new technologies in the 1960s.

Gawlik calls for the same sort of full court press with regard to sustainable supply chains –but with one significant caveat. Rather than wait for government to lead the way, Gawlik believes business needs to proactively design its own Apollo-like program with supply chain management strategically positioned at the fore.

“A ‘New Deal’ Apollo project, applying clean energy government initiatives, will be initiated in the years ahead. In the meantime, supply management professionals, as leaders, should light the way toward a radically new energy economy and apply market dynamics and innovation to achieving true sustainability,” he says. “By leading the way in energy and sustainability programs, supply management experts will strategically position business interests to benefit from the rapid changes in political policy. New sustainability policies and programs will be powerful enough to make the real difference in favor of new energy programs that will provide a solid foundation for prosperity in the years to come.”  

Check out the full article here.

While we’re on the topic of Apollo programs and technological innovation, I’d also like to suggest that you take a few minutes to read Janet Rae-Dupree’s recent feature in The New York Times. In “It’s No Time to Forget About Innovation,” Rae-Dupree asks a handful of business leaders for their thoughts on how companies today can strike a balance between notoriously inefficient creative forward-thinking and the corporate belt-tightening that’s now required by our sour economy.

The article includes a great quote from Chris Shipley, a technology analyst and executive producer of the DEMO conferences. “Our biggest challenge right now is fear,” she says. “The worst thing that a company can do right now is go into hibernation, into duck-and-cover. If you just sit on your backside and wait for things to get better, they’re not going to. They’re going to get better for somebody, but not necessarily for you.”