Inventing for the Sustainable Planet

That is to test it will work with the journey time and the traffic flow. Someone suggests having a camera to film the traffic flow in time-stop before we do anything. We can use this to visualize flow if we play the film. Then we could try a few bits of town, film that.

Anything else?

Working with people’s driving skill. How to drive in the green wave.

The driving instructor could put instructions on the Web for driving in the green wave.

‘How could we test that?’

We could do tests on a Sunday with a green wave driving testing day. The driving instructors would do this as a freebie to get publicity for their eco driving courses.

Already allocated resources!

The fizzy drink group is debating the voluntary agreement. Do agreements really work?

People are talking about the ‘measure’ part of SIX SIGMA. (This is a management tool not known to most people. But…I realize all tools and experience can be used.) They want to measure the impact on sales by changing the display – they can test the agreement just on the display changes.

The schools want to ban fizzy drinks, which will signal something to the parents.

‘We can try the ban in one school,’ a suggestion comes.

Facilitator says ‘rings on water, rings on water’.

You can see how the behaviour change could spread like rings on water. In the test there should be the seeds of the spread to a wider audience. In the test you sow the seed to create the spread. Next exercise: how can we use the test to spread the results wider?

A group member of the horticultural group says if they could do one good circle first, then they can do a ‘teach the teacher’ circle to turn delegates into circle leaders themselves. Just setting up everything at home is the most difficult thing. Once you get going it is easy. The circle does not have to last a growing season. I start to mention when and how long but the facilitator encourages us to just concentrate on the way the rings would work.

‘Really think about how you can reach out to people to reach out to others.’

Instruction leaflets can be printed out and spread. The supermarkets are a chain so someone there could spread the idea. One supplier of all needed equipment could sell all equipment etc.

‘Any ideas on marketing the availability of these home growing kits?’ asks the facilitator.

‘We could mass market though the local newspaper. We could do a neighbor thing, invite people in for a demo!

Ideas are being written down. I try to see how they are writing it, a simple list seems to suffice.

The other stuff was complicated with the circular diagram. Not this bit. The apartment block owners are listed as assets. The plan is to invite residents to see home growing in action. The ideas will spread, it is hoped, by word of mouth, ‘Rings on water’ for the transport group is more difficult. I go over to them to see what they have thought. Walking poles. It is the family and friends. Walking together.

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