The Path to Net Positive: Principles, Practical Models and Progress to Date

1. The Path to Net Positive: Principles, Practical Models and
Progress to Date
Bill Baue, Sustainability Context Group @Bbaue
Zoe Le Grand, Forum for the Future @zlegrand
Ralph Thurm, A Leader’s Guide to ThriveAbility @aheadahead1
Claudine Blamey, The Crown Estate @ClaudineBlamey
Greg Norris, Harvard School of Public Health
Asheen Phansey, Dassault Systemes

2. Net Positive Workshop
John Pflueger
6 Oct 2015

3. 3
Dell 2020 Legacy of Good Plan
Our strategy for bringing sustainability and
business objectives together to benefit
customers while simultaneously leaving a
legacy of social and environmental good.

4. 4
1
Promise:
Creating a
Legacy of Good
Legacy of Good

5. 5
By 2020, the good that
will come from our
technology will be 10x
what it takes to create
and use it.
Building a legacy of good.
Learn more at Dell.com/2020

6. 6
Guiding principles
Focus on customers
Our sustainability strategy must
be intertwined with the business
strategy. That’s what our
customers want.
Innovate
Business as usual will not produce
the results our customers want.
Scale
We must take advantage of our
worldwide reach and view our
activities with a global lens.
Transparency/Accountability
We will report on a regular basis
openly and with clarity.
Collaborate
We cannot do this alone.
Leadership
We must become an advocate
for social and environmental
change.
The 6 principles that informed the creation of the Legacy of Good Plan
Materiality informs our every decision

7. 7
Measurement Studies
• Studied impacts
– Start with carbon – most mature for
measurement
– Water likely next
– Will need to get to social impacts, but very hard
to measure
• Interpreting results
– No allocation – both benefits and footprint
belong to the value chain
• Measurement pilots
– Electronic Medical Records
› BSR, Kaiser leading
– Online Education
› ASU Study complete
› Planning phase 2 with Harvard
– Telecommuting
– “Pilot 4” (with Forum)
Initial pilot
Follow-on study for
verification /
generalization
Scale-up analysis
• Total potential
• Dell’s role /
“market share”

8. 8
Measurement Challenges
• Finding collaboration partners has been challenging
– Pilots have been “opportunistic”
– Dell Connected Workplace study internal only
– Difficult to sell idea if potential partner not already studying
• Measuring IT footprint has been difficult for all pilots
– No real prior art to leverage
– Many applications and services support multiple solutions
– hard to separate / allocate
– Organizational barriers between CSR, IT and operational
groups
• Solution-by-solution studies scale, but not enough
– Pilots important but take time
– Solutions can scale to multiple customers, but…
– Don’t cover all engagement with a customer and…
– Dell has *lots* of customers
• So, we need additional measurement
approaches
– Sector-by-sector
› Look at Dell’s relationship with specific industry
sectors
› E.g. finance, manufacturing
– Customer-by-customer
› Look at overall engagement with a specific
customer / collaboration partner
– CDP downstream
› The ‘mass-market’ version of the customer-by-
customer approach
› Pilot CDP downstream using an approach similar to
that of CDP supply chain
› How have our customers used our technology to
manage their footprint?

9. 9
The Value, Promise and Challenge of Net Positive
• Net Positive is inspiring, but…
– … it’s also immature and rapidly evolving
– Everyone seems to have an opinion, and many of these
are different
• Any body of work around Net Positive needs to focus
on credibility *and* value and be balanced
– The strictest view of Net Positive will only deliver value to
a very few
– The loosest view of Net Positive will have no credibility
• The role of the NGOs
– Create a space / environment that is enticing, engaging
and valuable to aspiring companies
– Build capabilities to provide guidance
• The role of the Commercial sector
– Will be making the financial and time investments in
solutions and approaches
– Will be the ones who put NP into practice
– NGOs must appreciate this
• Patience and elbow grease
– We have more questions than answers right now
› What’s a reasonable definition?
› Does Net Positive comprehend trade-offs?
› Are there impacts that are so negative, there is no
possible way to balance?
– Small wins now will mean more long-term progress
than waiting for a fully-formed plan
– We will need *multiple* approaches
› Net Positive metrics / protocols for a number of levels
• Warning flags
– A fragmented, disjoint Net Positive will be of little
use to the community
– Very easy to miscommunicate goals and tasks
– Net Positive must be an “open system”
› proprietary approaches or frameworks will end NP before
it gets started
– Dell cares about Net Positive, but will move
forward with its 10x20 program regardless