Integrative Design, Virtuous Circles, Tri-Sector Innovation and a Paradigm Whose Time is Now

j.a.ginsburg
From the WTF? Economy to the Next Economy
9 min readAug 19, 2017

You can tell a lot about a man by his pipes. Ever since I saw physicist and “negawatt” champion Amory Lovins’ utility closet on a tour of his remarkably energy-efficient home, I have been besotted with fat, short, straight pipes. It turns out that it takes a lot of energy to pump liquid through skinny, long, crooked pipes. Changing the configuration can reduce friction by more than 90%. That means smaller motors can pump whatever needs pumping. “It isn’t very complicated,” notes Lovins, Chief Scientist and Co-founder of Rocky Mountain Institute. “It’s just good old Victorian engineering.”

Nearly two-thirds of all the electricity generated is used to power the world’s motors—and half of those motors are used to power pumps. This notably low-tech fix could, at least hypothetically, eliminate the need for half of the the world’s coal plants, according to Lovins.

Lose the coal plants and their pollution goes, too:

  • No mercury, or nitrous and sulphur dioxides, or particulates to foul the air
  • No coal ash to foul streams
  • No CO2 to trap atmospheric heat and acidify oceans

Lose pollution and the health of everything improves:

It seems astounding that something as simple as bending pipes a different way not only can dramatically cut energy costs, but medical bills, too. The cheapest healthcare is, of course, the healthcare that isn’t needed.

CHEEKY BANANAS

In a nutshell, that’s the beauty of integrative design: a virtuous circle of expanding benefits stemming from a single strategic innovation. Imagine it at scale: a series of interlaced strategic innovations generating cascades of new, different, better solutions.

This was the approach Lovins used to design his home nestled high up in the Colorado Rockies. The 4,000 square foot structure—which was built in the early 1980s, though periodically updated—combines plenty of “good old Victorian engineering” (thick walls for thermal regulation) with the latest energy-miser tech (LED lights, windows designed to moderate heat gain). The result is a light-filled yet cozy home that produces more energy than it uses.

The building cheerfully and sometimes cheekily challenges accepted norms. Located in the heart of ski country near Aspen, where snowfall averages around 300 inches (that’s 25 feet) annually, Lovins grows bananas in an elaborate 900 square foot indoor tropical garden that also features a gurgling waterfall and a fish-filled stream. A massive, optimally-angled array of windows floods the space with light and, depending on the season, vents hot air, while a massive cement arch provides both structural support and heat storage. Plants, too, have multiple functions: They keep the air fresh, generate much-appreciated humidity and supply a steady harvest of healthy snacks.

The one thing Lovins’ home lacks is a conventional HVAC system. It simply isn’t needed, which cuts operational costs. Not having to buy such a system also contributed significant savings to the initial construction budget. “The least risky business investment you can make is the capex (capital expenditure) you didn’t spend,” says Lovins.

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING

Integrative design is as much a way of thinking as it is a methodology. Once you begin to understand how things work in terms of relationships—that tweaking x affects y and z, which, in turn, improves x, which taken all together improves q—it quickly becomes addictive. Each round of improvements quickly sparks the next.

The hardest part can be getting started. As sensible and logical as integrative design may be, it is often at odds with conventional wisdom. For example, investment in a specific energy-saving technology such as super duper insulation is typically tied to the amount of money it will save over time. Not surprisingly, this kind of incremental thinking generates incremental improvements. For the really big wins, says Lovins, you’ve got to “tunnel through the cost barrier.” If you spend more on super duper insulation and combine it with other energy-saving technologies, then the HVAC system you didn’t need to buy more than likely will pay for the whole thing.

Bananas anyone?

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

PARADIGMS SHIFTING | FROM DESIGN THINKING & HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN…

Yet as significant as integrative design has been for engineering, it also has the potential to change how companies approach innovation.

For the last decade, innovation has been defined and shaped by the combination of design thinking, human-centered design and lean start-up methodology. It has become a standard part of business school canon, a readily teachable formula. Indeed, it seems like every consultancy offers its own bespoke version, complete with Post-it®-fueled collective brainstorming sessions, user-focused research, speedy prototyping and the field-testing of “minimum viable products” (MVP). Design as a discipline has moved into the C-suite. Designers have been cast as innovation gurus.

Tim Brown, president and CEO of design-thinking pioneer IDEO, explains the challenge:

“The classic tension that we’re often working with in design and innovation…is between desirability (what meets the needs of the people we might be designing for), feasibility (in other words, what can we do with the technology to make that possible) and, finally, viability (which makes it a sustainable and, hopefully, profitable business solution)…

…Design is essentially human-centered… What makes life easier and more fruitful? What meets the desires of your customers, stakeholders—whomever you might be designing for?”

Design thinking is consumer/client-oriented, focused and linear in its approach.

more on Design Thinking from IDEO U

…TO CONTEXTUAL PERSPECTIVE

By contrast, the hallmark of integrative design is more lateral: identifying contextual synergies. The two approaches can complement one another.

For example, integrative design’s whole systems perspective lends itself to circular economy applications. Whether measured in terms of saving energy, money, time or logistics, efficiency provides a useful framework for experimentation. How can different parts of a system be tweaked and leveraged to make a better widget or deliver a superior service?

Meanwhile IDEO’s Circular Design Guide, developed with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, is firmly grounded in design thinking practices. It takes a human-centered approach with an emphasis on stakeholders that more directly addresses the marketing and management components essential to the successful launch of the new, or improved, widget or service.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

WINWIN

Integrative design is about seeing past silos to more readily identify novel combinations that deliver better outcomes. Jens Molbak, founder and CEO of WinWin, has done just that with a business model that merges the entrepreneurial savvy of private enterprise with the powerful networks of nonprofits and the vast databases of government. Private, Social, Public: It’s really more of a WinWinWin.

Jens Molbak

Molbak has been working on the idea for nearly three decades, beginning with his first company, Coinstar, a coin-counting kiosk business (now part of Outerwall). It turns out that more than half of the $15 billion worth of coins minted by the US Treasury each year end up out of circulation—much of it sitting in jars on people’s dressers. The other half cycles through an average of 20 transactions annually. Tallying it all up, Molbak found a $150 billion market segment hiding in plain sight.

Coinstar kiosks, however, do more that count dresser-drawer coins. By partnering with nonprofits, the company has also helped make fundraising efforts more efficient and profitable. For example, the massive amounts of change collected in orange UNICEF boxes by legions of costumed kids trick-or-treating on Halloween had become a logistics nightmare. Literally tons of money had to be shipped and each of the boxes opened individually. With CoinStar, kids pour the contents of their boxes into a kiosk and money is instantly sent electronically to UNICEF. Coinstar takes a small, discounted percentage for the service, so it’s win all the way around.

Since 1991, Coinstar has processed trillions of coins worth billions of dollars, while helping nonprofits raise more than $100 million. The company has also saved the US Treasury—which means taxpayers, which means us—more than $2 billion since more coins are staying in circulation longer. The cheapest coin is the coin that doesn’t need to be minted, or shipped to regional banks for distribution.

With WinWin, Molbak is scaling what he calls “tri-sector innovation.” “We are the innovators behind the innovators,” he explains, in the business of systemic change.

By providing tools such as detailed maps of government services (data on the first five cities will be released soon in a public wiki), Molbak envisions the WinWin model opening up massive new opportunities for businesses that address social needs as part of the package.

Three questions are central to the tri-sector model:

  • What is your private sector strategy?
  • Was is your social sector strategy? This is different than a CSR (corporate social responsibility) program. The strategy must be central to the profitability of the enterprise.
  • What is your public sector strategy? (How can public sector assets be leveraged to grow the business?)

As an example of a promising tri-sector business, Molbak points to Propel, a startup with an app that helps food stamp recipients better manage benefits (70% have smart phones). Seen through a tri-sector lens, this $70 billion public program is a $70 billion market with a 45 million-strong customer base. By leveraging public data, Propel has made it possible for supermarkets to reach a demographic that had largely been invisible to them. Now they can tailor and distribute coupons through the Propel app. For those receiving benefits, dollars go a little further. Stores make more money. And Propel has a sustainable business selling ads. This spring the Brooklyn-based company raised $4 million in seed funding, attracting the attention from major VC players such as Andreessen Horowitz and impact investor Omidyar Network. WinWin is also an investor.

For Molbak, this is just the tip of the iceberg. He points out that funding for the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) comes up short anywhere from $2 trillion to $7 trillion annually. There simply aren’t enough philanthropic or tax dollars to come close to meeting such vast need. He hopes a new, integrative way of doing business—one that offers clear benefits for all three collaborating sectors—can help fill the gap.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

DESIGN AS A SCALING VECTOR: BACK TO PLUMBING, FOLLOWING NATURE’S LEAD

It turns out that it really wouldn’t cost all that much to straighten out the pipes that would cut demand for coal power plants, that would reduce pollution, that would improve health.

According to Lovins, the payback for retrofits is typically less than a year. For new construction, it can be cheaper than traditional plumbing. Despite such favorable economics, “it is not yet in IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) or in any official forecast reports, studies or engineering textbooks because it is not a technology” he says. “It’s a design method. People don’t think of design as a scaling vector. But we do…”

In short, plumbing infrastructure presents some major low-hanging fruit in the fight against climate change. Given that much of the world’s plumbing is either so old that it needs to be replaced, or requires upgrades to handle the rising sea levels, or simply needs to be built in the first place, the opportunities are enormous. What does a better future look like? Fat, short, straight pipes are certainly a part of it.

•••••••••••

In an exercise of what can only be termed reverse biomimicry, researchers at the Salk Institute recently discovered that plant growth can be graphed along a curved line—the Pareto front—that marks the balance between performance and cost. They found that the structure of their plants in their study closely resembled that of city subway lines, which had been shaped by similar constraints. Now there is scientific proof for something that any gardener worth the dirt under her fingernails has long known: Plants don’t just shoot out leaves and branches willy-nilly, but rather expend just the right amount of energy to match conditions: a whole systems approach for optimal performance.

Integrative design is nature’s default strategy. From the structure of cell walls and the branching of tree limbs (no elbow joints!) to the dynamics of microbiomes, forest ecosystems and coral reefs, systems nest into systems, constantly iterating in real time to achieve the most efficient and effective balance. Thanks to advances in AI, sensors (IoT) and data analytics, our ability to understand human-made systems in real time has become increasingly granular and subtle. The deeper we look, the more opportunities emerge for new, more efficient combinations of technologies and practices.

•••••••••••

Our hearts—and hearts in general—have much to teach us about efficient motors. Our circulatory system—and circulatory systems in general—have much to teach us about optimal pipe configuration. Consider: Over the course of eighty-year lifespan, the human heart will beat more than 3 billion times, pumping non-stop at a rate of 5 quarts a minute: 58 million gallons total.

Not only are better answers all around us, they are also within us. Just listen to your heart.

Integrative design is a paradigm whose time is now.

— J. A. Ginsburg

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

RELATED:

  • Amory Lovins and Tom Friedman: RMI Energy Summit, August, 2017

Sign up to discover human stories that deepen your understanding of the world.

Free

Distraction-free reading. No ads.

Organize your knowledge with lists and highlights.

Tell your story. Find your audience.

Membership

Read member-only stories

Support writers you read most

Earn money for your writing

Listen to audio narrations

Read offline with the Medium app

Published in From the WTF? Economy to the Next Economy

How work, business, and society face massive, technology-driven change. A conversation growing out of Tim O’Reilly’s book WTF? What’s the Future and Why It’s Up To Us, and the Next:Economy Summit.

No responses yet