Hannah Jones on Nike's Sustainable Innovation Marathon

After two hours of interactive warm-up exercises, the 2011 Innovation Forum kicked off with Hannah Jones, the Vice President of Sustainable Business & Innovation for Nike.

As Joel Makower put it in the introduction to his 30-minute interview with Jones, when you think of innovation, you pretty much always think of Nike. From their waste-based shoes to their radical collaboration within their industry and beyond, Nike is truly mapping the trail of sustainable innovation.

Jones began by walking the audience of more than 200 sustainability professionals through the journey that Nike is taking on innovation -- a journey that has involved not just her own team and her own company, but companies as far-flung from the sportswear and apparel industries as Procter & Gamble and Eli Lilly.

She spoke particularly about the benefits of viewing innovation through the same lens that you view sustainability. "One of the things that sustainability people have learned how to do is think about systems and system change, and to think about networks and understanding grassroots communities," Jones explained. "Bringing those worlds together has great promise for both of those worlds."

Jones had a lot of insight to offer on the state of the market, both in terms of changing shoppers' buying habits to value greener products to changing how any company in any industry can be greener.

"Our mission statement isn't 'make lots of stuff," Jones said. "It's 'inspire and innovate on behalf of the athlete.' How can we think about completely different materials that would be great for performance, but would also be regenerative, recyclable, and reusable? How do we think about supply chains that are radically transformed? How do we make these better places to work, make them LEED, make them greener? And what does that mean for sustainability economy?"

Later in the discussion, Jones shared two takeaways about how to get people to want to buy products that are greener.

1. Never compromise performance or price for sustainability. If you do, you will ghettoize sustainability and you'll continue the belief in the market that sustainability equals less, and that, Jones said, is one of the biggest sustainability challenges we still face.

2. Give the consumer something they didn't even expect. How do you create a demand for doing new things? Jones gave the example of the gear that Nike gave to the footballers at last year's World Cup in South Africa. Made entirely from recycled plastic bottles, Nike never compromised on their performance requirements, and she said the players loved it, both on the field and off.

Similarly, the Jordan 23 basketball shoe made it greener as a result of moving away from solvents to glue the pieces together, as well as working with the factory to develop a way to use stitching and geometry to partially hold the shoe together. "It was a breakthrough inspiration," Jones said, " and it sends a shudder down the design community." And the innovation gave an added thrill to Nike customers -- not only was it a high-performance shoe, but when buyers found out it was significantly greener, it became an added bonus.

Although Nike has come a long way down the path of sustainability, and one that started from what Jones described as a "difficult" place -- namely, the child labor scandals of the 1990s -- Jones stressed that none of it was easy. Nike has put years of effort into assessing the life-cycle impacts of its materials -- and Jones says that Nike has about 75,000 materials that go into its various products in the course of just one year.

They've turned those studies into a series of tools that they're sharing within the apparel industry and beyond, with the goal of helping everyone get better. Whether it's the Considered Index, its Green Xchange, working with the Eco Index Apparel Tool or the Sustainability Consortium, Jones said the future of green is going to have to revolve around sharing.

As a closing thought, here's how Jones laid out the goal of sustainable innovation: "We're going to have to make today's status quo obsolete because [what we're making tomorrow] is better."

The reputation chain

The road to globalisation is littered with companies that have been caught out that failed to ensure workers in far away factories are treated properly - and paid properly, or that appropriate steps have been taken to protect the environment in the countries where their products are made.

A couple of months ago Nike had to deal with allegations that workers making its Converse brand shoes in Indonesia were being kicked and slapped, and called dogs and pigs.

And now Apple has come under fire from a group of Chinese environmental organisations for turning a blind eye to environmental pollution in its supply chain.

The allegations are contained in a report, “Pollution spreads through Apple’s supply chain” produced by Friends of Nature, Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs, Green Beagle, Envirofriends, Green Stone,  Environmental Action Network.

The report said: “Through our investigations, we discovered that the pollution from some of Apple’s suppliers had already caused severe damage to the environment.

Earlier this year, Apple produced its Supplier Responsibility Report 2011 which highlights the work it is doing in this area. Crucially, its says: “Apple’s procurement decisions take into account a facility’s social responsibility performance, along with factors such as quality, cost, and timely delivery. When social responsibility performance consistently fails to meet our expectations, we terminate business.”

Apple has so far declined to comment publicly on the report, although it is understood to have offered discussions to the authors.

There is no doubt that major corporations have made substantial strides in dealing with these issues. But if Apple and Nike can run into problems, then there can be few that can claim to have dealt with these issues completely.