Atelier WeekNotes w/c 11 Sep 2023
Final prep for Net Zero Heat Lab. Impact investment: both worthwhile and limited. Three Horizons for sense-making. Enjoying the Chatham House Sustainability Unconference
I am writing newsletter of #weeknotes of starting the Atelier of What’s Next (What’s needed, What’s ready? What can we do? What next?). For my rationale for starting the Atelier see here.
First full week back was busy:
Final prep for Net Zero Heat Lab.
Impact investment: both worthwhile and limited.
Three Horizons for sense-making to end a leadership conference.
Enjoying the Chatham House Sustainability Unconference.
Final prep for Net Zero Heat Lab
As I type this I am on a train to Stratford-upon-Avon. Tomorrow 40 people arrive at a hotel. They are drawn from across the sector by Innovate UK, the UK's innovation agency, to address this question:
"How can we make the building renovation delivery process more efficient, effective, and lower cost to drive rapid decarbonisation?"
On Friday, about 5 new consortia will pitch for a share of £8.5m. If successful to a bid in this competition, they have almost 2 years to build a commercial demonstrator. If that is successful, then they can scale and be part of the UK going Net Zero.
The focus is the heating of buildings (rather than the heating for industrial purposes). Could be households, hospitals, shops, offices. As a rough idea of scale, we need to renovate about 1 million homes a year, with heat pumps, insulation and more, in order to get close to the UK's legal targets.
Monday to Friday is about getting these 40 people from loose connections to deep collaboration. I'm the designated lead facilitator, and have led the co-creation of a shape to those days (Dawn, Discover, Define, Develop, Pitch -- more in AWN w/c 31 July 2023). This week has been about final prep with the sponsors in Innovate UK, and the facilitation team, drawn from consultancy Carbon Limiting Technologies (CLT).
This is right on the frontier for all of us involved. Innovate UK has done other Innovation Labs, but shorter and without the sense of urgency and intractability that goes with Net Zero. I've run multi-day events but not quite like this. CLT has supported tonnes of start-ups from pre-seed to funding, in many way. But not with this 5 day sprint.
Inevitably, we don't quite know how things will play out. Indeed, even if this was our 10th time, things would play out in a unique way because of the differences in attendees and domain. So, we have a shape, and we have imagined possible tensions, and have fall back plans. As folks say about models, these will be wrong but hopefully in useful ways.
The main tension in my mind is around forming the consortia vs getting to quality pitches. People will need to form lasting relationships, built on trust, and be able to commit because they have confidence both in the concept of that consortia, and that it is the best one available to them out of all the consortia being formed. (An organisation might be able to be in more than one consortia, but would need to prove they have the capacity. Certainly, an organisation can only lead one.)
That points to giving that forming process space to breath and holding people back from grabbing the first idea that comes to mind.
But the pitch on Friday is there best chance for detailed feedback, adn also to be given permission to proceed to submitting a proposal. If it is too vague or immature, then they won't be able to go further. This points to giving the consortia quality time together, focussed on working through the competition questions as applied to their idea.
As I type here, my instinct is that time to form good relationships, and feel committed to the idea, is more important, because it provides the basis for what's next. A group can work quite quickly, if they trust each other and are excited by the idea. But that is far from a given.
We will have to make lots of judgements as we go, and be willing to improvise.
Obviously, the next WeekNotes will give my first reflections on what happened. Wish us luck!
WHAT NEXT
Deliver the Innovation Lab.
Reflect on it
Impact investment: both worthwhile and limited.
On Wednesday evening I was at an investor showcase by Conduit Connect, which "exists to scale innovative impact technologies and businesses that are solving some of the most challenging and critical issues of our time". They do this by "connecting world class entrepreneurs and fund managers to values aligned impact investors and experts".
Sidebar: One of their products is The Conduit EIS Impact Fund, a way for individual investors to put money into for-impact start-ups with some tax incentives. Disclosure: I have invested in the EIS. If you are considering doing so, then you must get your own independent financial advice.
The showcase had a series of really interesting and good start-ups, including: For The Creators (subscription service for motherhood clothes and more); ReBorn (waste into homeware); Fin (last mile delivery); and Redemption Roasters (reducing re-offending through coffee industry).
All of these have a well-intended impact. All of these might be good investments (do your own due diligence, etc, etc). In the terms of the Three Horizon (see here and below), it is unclear if these are sustaining innovations, which get pulled into keeping the status quo going for a little longer, or transformative innovations, which are building towards a visionary future.
For instance, one read of For The Creators is that it is a form of conspicuous consumption. It allows mothers to signal their status and identity by hiring items for a short period. While the direct environment impact per unit might be lower, it could just reinforce a culture where consumption is the dominant way of making meaning, which would increase environmental impact overall.
Or, maybe, it is part of a transition to an access economy (see here in the HBR, or this 2050 scenario I wrote for an unpublished book). A shift from owning to accessing would be vital in having absolute decoupling, where more economic activity drives less total environmental impact.
Right now, For The Creators could go either way.
But, taking a further stop back, none of these companies smelt like part of creating the 'industrial revolutions on a deadline' that we need (I think I picked up this phrase from Prof Tom Foxon's Energy and Economic Growth). This might well point to the upper limit of impact investing.
Indeed, in the drinks afterwards I found myself talking about Prof Johan Schott's work on Deep Transitions, where the first industrial revolution is a deep transition, and the adoption of subsequent General Purpose Technologies has been important but not of the same scale. His thesis is that we now need a second Deep Transition to reach a sustainable economy.
He is taking that thesis forward in a project called 'Transformative Investment'. It is not something I can summarise here. But safe to say, it is focused on socio-economic systems, rather than specific start-ups.
I'm happy to keep (a small tranche of) my money in the Conduit Connect EIS. But, as part of my portfolio, I feel more attracted to the Deep Transitions area for my working life.
WHAT NEXT
Retain investment in Conduit Connect EIS
Interview Johan Schott for Powerful Times.
Investigate further both Deep Transitions and Transformative Investment.
Three Horizons for sense-making to end a leadership conference.
I spent one day this week helping some high potentials leaders from British Land, "a property company which creates, owns and manages some of the UK’s best and most sustainable real estate – Places People Prefer".
Back in BC (Before Covid), I did some work as an associate of Forum for the Future, helping British Land with its sustainability strategy. I was asked to help with a leadership development event, but Covid struck. Last year they were able to run the course, and I contributed last year and this.
About 20 people with high potential, drawn from across the organisation, spend two days networking and hearing lots of insight on the future of property and adjacent subjects. The challenge on the third day: how can they make sense of all they've heard, and move into action for British Land and for themselves.
My solution: use the Three Horizons as a framing device.
(Also, note the Atelier of What’s Next slide template. I think we can say ‘simple’.)
So, they have sessions which ask them to apply all they've heard to different time frames.
How is today’s dominant pattern – how things get done in real estate and more widely – struggling?
What might emerge over the next 10-20 years? Identify 3-5 trends and write a day in your life in 2043.
What new ways of doing things today are responding to the present struggles and the future possibilities?
In the light of the above and the British Land sustainability strategy, what are the opportunities for British Land (or just your part of the organisation)?
What can I do which combines personal development with opportunities for British Land? What can I commit to after this event?
The location is a Cambridge college, and we had good weather. So, people could go outside, and go for walks. All of which was appreciated, after 2 days of powerpoint slides.
The feedback was positive. People liked the change of mode, and the different formats within the day (individual, small groups, whole groups; analytical and creative; writing and walking).
It helps that they were an engaged bunch, who wanted to engage with crunchy issues.
WHAT NEXT
Hopefully again next year.
A method to use for other 'concluding sense-making' events.
Enjoying the Chatham House Sustainability Unconference.
Finally, I spent a day at the Chatham House Sustainability Unconference. And what a wonderful day it was.
Chatham House is a "a world-leading policy institute with a mission to help governments and societies build a sustainably secure, prosperous and just world". It hosts a Sustainability Accelerator, which is "a major initiative to increase the speed and scale of the transition to a sustainable, inclusive future". It researches, assembles and incubates the ideas, expertise and energy that will help the world accelerate towards a sustainable future.
Its main event in the year is the Unconference, so-called because participants set the agenda on the day using Open Space Technology (basically, just enough structure so people can run the sessions they want, and oters know enough to choose which ones to go to -- think the best coffee breaks in normal conferences).
This was my first time, and the question this year was: 'How can we accelerate towards a fair and sustainable future?'. There were 100ish folk there, from lots of different backgrounds and countries.
I ran two sessions. I'm struggling for time, so I will put the details in the next WeekNotes. But a little tease:
'What would it take for incumbents and elites to defect from protecting the old to creating the new?'. I'm convinced that some kind of defection is necessary for the old system to go into managed decline, and for next systems to emerge.
'How can we use time well, combining being regimented (Chronos) with being opportunistic (Kairos) with being connected to the timeless unconscious (Aion)?' This was inspired by my wife's work on using time well.
More generally:
Open Space really works. The different format was needed to ride the curiosity of the diverse group.
Are there positive climate tipping points? Anyone in this area will be familiar with the idea of the physical tipping points of cliamte change, where a shift in a physical system like the Greenland Ice Sheet goes through a threshold and changes in an irreversible way, with dramatic consequences. Interesting to hear that Exeter University are looking for positive tipping points, shifts in how humans organise that then drive rapid decarbonisation.
People do default to simple answers. 'Isn't all the fault of consumerism / growth / corporates?' No. Our predicament isn't just from one thing. People say these tropes thinking they are being deeply insightful, but really the flat simplicity gets in the way of insight.
There is a growing field. I'm in my 20th year of working on sustainability. There were many people there who were still in school 20 years ago. And they have sustainability-related roles in for-impact organisations which didn't exist even 5 years ago.
The big picture here is that the Unconference is a necessary part of the mixing and community building from which new initiatives can emerge.
WHAT NEXT
Engage with the Sustainability Accelerator at Chatham House on the theme of 'what's needed, what's ready, what can we do?'.