“It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.”
If you are reading this then you no doubt also have a sense of urgency as we observe and digest what is happening to our climate and planet.
The inevitable question then becomes, “How can we collectively work together to make a difference?”.
To further break this down, we must include Southeast Asia (and its cities) in the solution.
Why? Consider these immutable drivers:
- It is the region with the highest growth globally in terms of population and city growth.
- The demographic bulge is around a very young population (compared to ageing regions such as North Asia, Europe or North America).
- It adds the equivalent of a New York City every six weeks in new urban sprawl.
- Cities account for 75 per cent of global CO2 emissions (but are only three per cent of total land mass).
If we don’t get Southeast Asia “right,” then our global environmental issue can’t be demonstrably solved or improved.
With Southeast Asia so critical, what models or precedents can we observe and potentially adopt to accelerate sustainability and green tech?
Also Read: Growing and transforming global green techs for sustainability
Consider how software evolved in only the last few decades. It is not only the overwhelming majority of capital spend and investment for businesses but also ubiquitous and integral to our personal lives and our consumption of both services and products.
But it was only a couple of decades ago that software was in monolithic (say ERP) isolated stacks. It was only specific IT members with deep domain expertise who understood the tech and its usage.
This looks very similar to today’s green tech solutions. It’s difficult to understand areas such as “carbon footprint and management”, “waste to fuel”, or “hydrogen power”. What are the categories around these that are relevant for my business or as an employee? How and where should I start? Am I making the right decisions on the tech, and how do I create an overall integrated architecture that makes sense?
Software presents a very compelling example and set of learnings in this regard.
Firstly, software and its impact and relevance were continually and simply explained to us. We were “conditioned” around “what problem it solves”. From this problem, we then began to understand this new category. This is a critical step in adoption because we think in categories.
A simple example of this is our neighbourhood supermarket. It is not organised alphabetically (or pictograms, etc.). It is in categories. And if we were to jump into a time machine and go back to our supermarket 20 years ago, many of today’s categories (“vegan”; “non-gluten”; “energy drinks”) wouldn’t exist.
If we take that same time machine to 20 years in the future, we will see many new categories that we never thought of, that we never thought we needed! This is because we have been conditioned (and explained to) around why the categories (based on a problem) are relevant to us.
Switching back to software, we see how clear categories evolved. In fact, an entire industry (tech analysts such as Gartner, Forrester, and IDC) was formed to tell us what those categories are and who the respective leaders are in each of them.
This meant that both IT and the business functions could talk about “architecture”. What key problems are we targeting, and how will we architect and combine the categories of software needed?
Also Read: Unlocking green fintech prosperity in Asia: Navigating the top 4 challenges
This is in an ecosystem where solutions can be integrated and interoperate with each other (and “system integrators” are another whole industry based on this).
We are clearly not “there” yet with sustainability and green tech:
- The solutions are still very difficult to understand for a broad set of internal employees or external users. They are thus not clear “categories” yet.
- They are largely stand-alone and do not easily integrate into a multi-component ecosystem.
- From a business or individual standpoint, it is difficult to see why I would adopt and benefit from this solution.
- ESG, while at least a broad-based framework, is open to interpretation with a convoluted set of components (such as diversity and inclusion).
For green tech startups and innovators to flourish and become as ubiquitous as software, they must “condition” and explain to us the core problem being solved and why it is relevant to us. This is a “point of view” rather than the product and its tech specs. Within this POV, tell us what this new category is.
And a category cannot exist as one company. There has to be an ecosystem of partners, channels, regulatory agencies, APIs, data flows (the list goes on).
For real change and impact in Southeast Asia and its urban growth, we must move from isolated products and tech to clear categories and their surrounding ecosystems. This is a massive opportunity for green tech startups and innovators to seize category and market leadership.
The critical context and impact of Southeast Asia in climate and sustainability around this has never been greater.
As business leaders, investors and advisors, we must encourage green tech startups and guide them on how to elevate their category strategy and the accompanying ecosystem mapping and execution.
It’s about designing the future and not just following! Carpe Diem, Let’s go make a difference!
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