Green PO Framework

Products don’t exist in isolation. Context matters - not only for commercial success but also for social and environmental impact. Additionally, most products are the result of teamwork. Understanding the playing field helps spot the main levers for sustainable product development and management.

This overview only describes this playing field without prescribing specific sustainable practices.

Control

Leading Myself: The only thing that we can directly control is our own behaviour. Someone who wants to change the way products are built can only and has to start with him- or herself. Building greener products starts with your own behaviour.

Collaborating Together: Products are built in a team. While individuals matter, an individual personal needs collaboration with a larger group of people, adding expertise, passion, time and further resources. Building greener products needs changes in collaboration.

 

Input factors

Time: Building and maintaining a product requires time of people.

Resources & Energy: Physical products require materials to be produced and energy to run the process of production. Frequently, resources and energy are also needed to use and run physical products. Also, digital products require hardware and energy to be built and used.

Money: Funding is required to compensate people for their time investment and to give them access to and, mostly, ownership of the resources.

 

Influence

A team equipped with sufficient input is able to develop a product. Product development and ownership enter a new sphere, one in which many aspects can only be influenced but not controlled anymore. The product - at the core - can be influenced to a very high degree, but not completely, keeping aspects like budgets and regulation from outer circles in mind.

Physical & Digital Products: For product people, the product is the focal point. This is not to neglect that customer needs and commercial requirements aren’t typically starting points or dominant constraints in product work. But products don’t exist in isolation.

Organisation: Products are built within an organisation. It provides resources but comes with constraints, like program management, culture, management convictions and shareholder interests. The same product can be a success in one organization and a failure in another organisation.

Infrastructure: Typically, infrastructure is required to make a product accessible. Vehicles require gas or loading stations, take-back schemes require return logistics; cloud software requires the World Wide Web. Sometimes, a product can only be successful if the required infrastructure is available.

Market: Customers are the ones who pay for the product. Usually, customers have multiple options. Therefore, competitors need to be considered when developing a winning product. Together, customers and competitors form the market.

Social Systems: While the market frames actors mainly as commercial and transactional subjects, these economic behaviours are influenced by social systems. These can be trends and moral convictions from small or large communities, as well as the cultural meaning of products and traditions in various industries. On a public policy level, regulation defines the social constraints of markets. This itself is influenced by the form of a state and cultural beliefs about the good or right life to live.

Planetary Systems: As homo sapiens sapiens, humans are an integral part of nature on planet earth. The possibilities of social systems and everything inside are constrained by planetary boundaries. On a large scale, this refers to concepts like ecological tipping points and the interconnectedness of natural systems as Gaia Earth. But this also refers to local biosystems, the habitats of animals near a mining area, the water reservoir next to a plant, the geographical surface, the emissions of production process, and the meteorological conditions of a company site.  

Strategy & Business Model: Products are embedded in an organisation's strategy and business model. How an organisation generates value and money is usually linked to its strengths and weaknesses. Strategy and business model at least require consistency with the organisation, compatibility with the infrastructure and are embedded in the market dynamics. Obviously, they need to comply sufficiently with social and ecological systems. Strategy and business model can simultaneously enable and constrain product development.

Value Proposition: A product is just an instrument to fulfil a value proposition. The value proposition is internally related to strategy and business model and externally mostly linked to the market.

 

Impact

A product has an impact on the world. This is intended, as it should solve problems. The three dimensions of sustainability – social, environmental, and economical – define the categories.

People: Products influence people’s behaviours directly but also indirectly by the consequences of this behaviour change for others.

Planet: Changes in human behaviour and the world around us can have consequences on the planet, whether small or large.

Profit: Products and organisations can only be maintained if revenue covers costs, and they mostly yield a return to motivate sponsors to invest in the product.

Loop back: Fractions of this impact can be reused to maintain the product and invest resources in other activities (arrow looping back to time, resources & energy, and money). But they can also leave the organizational scope and affect states and processes elsewhere (people, planet, profit arrows pointing to the right).

Acknowledgement: This framework is based on inspiration and feedback from product and sustainability experts, namely: Joanna, Julia, Ina, Manuel, Maryse, Michael, Richard, Tibor & Scott.

 

This overview only describes this playing field without prescribing specific sustainable practices. To learn more about sustainable practices, proceed with:

 

Acknowledgement: This framework is based on inspiration and feedback from product and sustainability experts, namely: Diana, Joanna, Julia, Ina, Manuel, Maryse, Michael, Richard, Tibor & Scott.