Ed Morrison · The power of connecting assets | Green manufacturing

April 16th, 2011

Last week, I was up at Michigan State conducting a Strategic Doing workshop. The folks at MSU will be partnering with Purdue to continue building our our networks. Next month, we’ll be conducting a follow-on workshop to align Michigan State’s various initiatives in Detroit. It’s all part of creating a Strategic Doing network in Central Michigan, anchored at Michigan State.

I shared with the workshop participants a story about the power of connecting assets.

In 2007, a small group of no more than 12 of us met in the basement of the White County courthouse, just north of Purdue. We came to explore what steps they could do to move their region of 14 counties toward a sustainable economy in energy efficiency and renewable energy. We started out with the first question of Strategic Doing: “What could we do?”

Strategic Doing is an agile strategy discipline that we have been perfecting at Purdue to stimulate open innovation in loosely joined networks. By “open innovation”, we mean innovating in partnership with others outside your organization by sharing the risks and rewards of both the process and the outcomes.

Here’s how we framed the question: “What could we do to distinguish our region nationally in sustainability and clean energy?” My colleague at Purdue, Christy Bozic, was the first to speak. A manufacturing engineer, Christy pointed out that Purdue had a lot of assets in teaching manufacturers new skills for sustainability. She wondered, “Could we establish a new green collar certification for manufacturing?” She added, “I don’t think anything like that exists.”

The representative from Ivy Tech, the state’s community college system, pointed to the expertise within her system to develop and deliver curriculum. The economic developers around the table immediately saw the value of promoting their region as a center for sustainable manufacturing. They noted that Subaru, located in West Lafayette, was a national leader in “zero landfill” manufacturing. As our conversation evolved, the opportunity became more clear in everyone’s mind.

From this conversation, which took no more than 90 minutes, the group launched the first national certification in green manufacturing, the Green Manufacturing Specialist Certification. The training educates both hourly and salaried workers in the principles of clean manufacturing, energy conservation and waste reduction. Through Purdue’s collaboration with the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, the certificate is now distributed nationally.

You can learn more about the certification here.

In June, our growing national network will gather in Indianapolis to continue working on the curriculum for Strategic Doing. You can learn more by contacting Peggy Hosea at Purdue: phosea@purdue.edu

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