Sustainable Business

by CHRIS RIVARD :: OCT 27, 2006 :: COMMENTS (0)

The book, Worldchanging: A User's Gude to the 21st Century was recently released and I just wanted to post a quick note about sustainability and business.

We have had the opportunity to work with some great clients involved in community development and sustainable architecture and try to incorporate some of these concepts into our daily work and interactions with clients.

Something I think about quite a bit is how can a business like ours, a technology consultancy, be sustainable in the way that clean energy or green architecture is? I would be interested to hear from others how you incorporate sustainability into your code, design, information architecture, client interactions, etc. Is it even possible? What does that even mean? Object-oriented coding practices, templates for IxD work, riding your bike to work? In this line of work, is there a difference between efficiency and sustainability? Is user-centered design inherently sustainable?

Are the leaders in our industry doing anything to contribute to sustainability? Does Google's flexible hours and fuel efficiency vehicle incentive program offset building a hydro dam on the Columbia? What about Microsoft? Apple?

I think our industry and many other service-related fields are in a interesting position. We generate code, our footprints are relatively small, is there anything that our industry can do to contribute to sustainability. What do you think?

tags: SUSTAINABILITY

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