Is It Time to Re-Think Your Green Team?

Green Biz (Quevedo and Latimerz) - Can green teams help companies innovate beyond internal operations and actually influence product and service innovation? If so, what will it take to realign and redesign these teams so that their energy and social capital can be optimized? Our study, "Generating Sustainable Value: Moving Beyond Green Teams to Transformation Collaboratives" (pdf), produced several compelling insights.

In order to innovate beyond internal operations and cost savings, and even to successfully implement internal initiatives, green teams need specific alignment with existing company goals, and require explicit design for success -- that is, a design for specific outcomes, a design criterion that project and product teams in businesses must always have. This design must integrate with established business processes.

This may appear an obvious set of success criteria, yet traditionally -- and currently – most green teams are loosely managed and tend to be "grass roots" in nature. In previous research studies and various articles on green teams, the general premise has been that, while these teams benefit from corporate support and guidance, a hands-off approach is what encourages creativity, innovation and engagement.

According to the results of our study, the reality is actually the opposite...