Greening the executive suite

Umair has a good post on the Harvard Business blog on the management DNA changes necessary for companies to really go green. What caught my attention was this excerpt:

They’re going to discover that the same principles of management are necessary to make companies green as those that we’ve been discussing at the edge: democratization, openness, transparency, love, and a fierce embrace of what’s good – to name just a few.

That’s a pretty fundamental change and it’s pretty clear that so far there are some companies that get it, some that are trying and some that need a little help.

The interesting thing is that these same requirements (democratization, openness, transparency) have been in place for companies looking to get an innovation advantage through product lifecycle management. Democratization because the best ideas can come from anywhere in the company, openness because best in class companies are able to operate in what Henry Chesbrough calls “Open Innovation” and transparency because using a PLM system in a silo consistently sub-optimizes results. So in the race to become green it will be interesting to watch and see if companies that have become innovation leaders through PLM are able to get to green sooner than the competition. If Umair is right in outlining the requirements, they seem to have all the skills mastered.