Dassault Systèmes is investing in keeping our business sustainable using the concept of net-positive, or measuring and increasing our positive environmental impacts – our “handprint”—relative to our negative impacts. We’ve written before about why this idea is important to us, and I recently had the opportunity to work with other companies investing in this new concept. In June, I represented our company at the SHINE Summit at Harvard on the topic of net-positive, but the true meeting of the minds happened in July—away from the limelight at a smaller, more hands-on working group of about 25 people at the offices of Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) in New York. It was there that I had the opportunity to start working closely with John Pflueger, Principal Environmental Strategist for Dell.
Dell has been developing a corporate strategy called their “Legacy of Good“, one of the clearest net-positive aspirations of any company: Dell announced in the fall of 2013 that, by 2020, the good that will come from their technology will be ten times what it takes to create and use it. I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to learn more from John about these efforts, and discuss the importance of net-positivity.
John shared a fascinating case study during the workshop, which explored the net-positive benefits of technology in higher education at Arizona State University. The Dell-ASU study showed that the increased access to degree programs granted by online education creates socioeconomic benefits of up to $545,000, while abating carbon footprint by more than 30 metric tons CO2 (eq), per undergraduate student. John says that they expected the carbon savings, but found that the larger socioeconomic story was far more compelling, and so much larger, than the direct environmental benefit. John is currently undertaking a similarly scoped telecommuting study for Dell’s own offices, and will eventually expand this to include Dell’s customers, which goes far beyond simple footprint-reduction activities.
As John discussed with me, this project is consistent with the Legacy of Good vision, the motivation for which comes straight from the top and is part of Michael Dell’s vision for his company. The vision isn’t so much about what Dell can do, but rather about creating a culture that values highly how technology can help Dell’s customers achieve net-positive results. And while Dell is keen to measure those results, this video shows how they’re thinking about the human side of the equation and the potential impact of information technology more broadly.
There’s much more work to be done. Building the handprinting and footprinting methodologies to be able to measure something like a 10x return—what John is fond of calling a project or company’s “social and environmental ROI”—requires rethinking a lot of the way that sustainability professionals like us think about measurement. (Initially their “10x good” program is focused on carbon, but may expand to other key metrics, such as water.) Dassault Systèmes is involved in the Sustainability and Health Initiative for NetPositive Enterprise (SHINE), a consortium led through the Harvard School of Public Health, and Dell is involved in the Net Positive Group led by Forum for the Future; we’re now linking forces to create a united task force to reimagine the way that sustainable impact is measured and managed by global corporations.
At Dassault Systèmes, we hope to learn from Dell’s lead in communicating the message of net-positive in an authentic and transparent way: take a look at their Legacy of Good Update for an awesome way to talk about these efforts.
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