Doing well... by doing good - Interface

Leadership, change and a higher call.

Those involved with Mindshift have described our challenge using these kinds of words and ideas. How do you (we) change a complex industry, highly entrenched in outdated methods, habits and interests? For Ray Anderson it started with a personal challenge - and subsequent transformation. Kyle Davy shares some of this story in his book, Value Redesigned.

“In August 1994 Ray C. Anderson embarked on a journey that would transform him as well as the company he founded 20 years earlier. That company, Interface Inc., is the world’s largest producer of contract commercial carpet. Anderson’s wake-up call happened as he prepared to deliver a keynote address to an Interface task force charged with responding to customers who were asking what Interface was doing for the environment. At first he approached the question from a conventional manufacturer’s viewpoint that focused on compliance… However, in the midst of his preparation, he happened upon Paul Hawken’s book, The Ecology of Commerce. Reading the book “changed my life” he notes. :

The company conceived and began implementation of a new business model, which Anderson broadly described as, “We will do well…very well…by doing good.

Over the next decade, Anderson and Interface continued to pursue this mission, establishing a new web of relationships linking thought-leaders in the sustainability movement with industry participants (customers, builders, regulators). The company’s promotion of learning about sustainability issues and sharing ideas and best practices spread its influence significantly beyond the boundaries of its core business.

The collaboration with other leaders has lead to the company’s Pletsus Web site for gathering and sharing “Practices Leading Toward Sustainability.”

Design Build or Integrated Practice

Those in the design build world are finding opportunities created by the dysfunctions of the conventional delivery process.

Is design build moving toward Integrated Practice? Or is it just another spin on a current model with the architect at the lead?

Here is an article from a recent conference on Design Build and Integrated Practice. This article was written by Cindy Frewen Wuellner, FAIA and PhD, a virtual contributor to Operation Mindshift.

Here is a quote from Markku Allison when I posed the question to him. Markku leads the effort for Integrated Practice through the AIA.

"Actually, architect led design build and integrated practice are NOT the same thing. Integrated practice is not a delivery method; it’s the term coined by the institute to describe how industry transformation will shake out for architects, and is a set of values and beliefs about practice. Industry consensus for the "name" of the delivery model behind integrated practice is integrated project delivery, which is also not the same thing as architect led design build."

I'll be curious to hear what others think.

Mindshift's mission involves understanding the technical elements of delivery, the models but as Markku points out - going deeper to the paradigms that frame and condition our models.

World Future Society's Top 10 Forecasts for 2007

I just returned from the 2007 conference in Minneapolis. Here are some of the top forecasts from the society.

There were several interesting session including a new paper soon to be released mapping body chemistry and brain orientation to Meyer's Briggs.



This link provides a written version.

Consider the worldshift!

Pause and consider. This is not a ripple. This is a rip.

Here is a link to the site if the video above does not work for you.