Front-end Sustainability: Initiating the right sustainable projects

Developed by Kristine Fisker

Projects, programs and portfolios shape our society and world permanently, by shaping the impact of the products, buildings, infrastructure and systems designed within them. One of the most critical questions for project management going forward will be how to aid in tackling the large, complex, and interlinked sustainability challenges that need to be solved for societies worldwide to survive and prosper.

The 'Fuzzy' Front-End, when a project is conceptualized and defined, is the stage which is most critical in determining the impact of a project, yet the Front-End of Eco-Innovation has received little attention by the field of project management . This article will describe how project, program and portfolio managers can achieve effective sustainable impact and increase resilience and opportunity creation for their organizations by increasing sustainability focus in the fuzzy front end.

Why implement a sustainability focus in the front-end?

Figure 1: Influence, cost of changes, and information during the innovation process

The 'Fuzzy' Front-End is the most uncertain, challenging part of projects, while at the same time being the part of the project that has the largest influence on final project effectiveness (see Figure 1). "For companies to achieve true sustainability as opposed to a lower level of sustainability, considerations for sustainability have to be incorporated in early stages of the innovation process".

"Sustainability managers spend much of their time correcting the impacts of todays’ products, services and business models. If companies redirected just 10% of their sustainability budget – beyond compliance, reporting, operations, supply chain, communications, etc – to fuzzy front-end innovation, they could effectively ‘design-out’ sustainability problems from their future portfolio AND align sustainability to an opportunity and growth agenda from the outset."

"The ability to ‘eco-innovate’ may become increasingly important under growing global pressures (see e.g., Royal Society, 2012), and may become a new source of competitive advantage. Hence, mastering the FEEI would be a key to business success and longevity. The tools required for this can perhaps be mastered more easily in big, resourceful companies, but larger companies may have difficulties in allowing the eco-innovation process to be open, informal and creative, aspects which contributed positively to the success of novel eco- innovations." ()

As sustainability is a new lense to view projects through, it requires rethinking... Move from reactive to pro-active.

Management of meaningful sustainability projects, programs and portfolios can be especially complex, as the scope is beyond what a single organization, government or individual can solve alone. How to tackle this, will be described below, informed by a review of literature on the topic and structured with an offset in the advice in the article 'The fuzzy front-end of sustainability' by Chris Sherwin .

How to do it

0. Unfuzz the fuzzy front-end

The foundation of initiating the right sustainable projects, is to recognize that the fuzzy front-end is often under-managed in organizations , but can in fact be managed, and then to start giving it the attention and ressources it is due. Because the fuzzy front-end is a highly insecure and thus cognitively uncomfortable stage, there is a tendency to go with a pre-concieved idea of the. .

Too many projects are initiated

First step is acknowledging the tendency for lack of management of the front-end. Because it is a highly insecure and uncomfortable stage, ppl. will tend to go with a preconceived idea. Being aware of this and realising there are ways to manage without narrowing scope based on biases, is first step.

Many projects are initiated with a preconcieved idea of what the solution to the problem at hand will be

initiated based on a

"Too many projects are initiated based a preconceived idea of the technical solution to the problem at hand" .

Open Innovation: Going beyond the individual organization

"Individual organizations must be part of the solution, but they cannot be addressed within the organization alone or solved independently in other organizations." "The key to solving complex, systemic, long-term problems across sectors and levels is to address them together."

The Sustainable Innovation Early Phase Model

Tool