Steelcase's Vision for an Eco-Friendly Future: 'Radical Evolution'

By Leslie Guevarra, GreenerDesign

Angela Nahikian is the director of Global Environmental Sustainability for Steelcase Inc. The key to the company's sustainability practices -- and its design strategy -- lies in its approach, she says. And that approach may come as a surprise to some people who have tracked of this industry leader and its nearly 100-year history of innovation. Angela joins us to today to talk about her company and the concept of "radical evolution."

Leslie Guevarra: Angela, thank you so much for being with us today.
Angela Nahikian: Thank you, Leslie. Happy to be here.

LG: Would you talk to us about sustainability practices in business? It's a huge issue and Steelcase has long been an innovator in this area and in fact an industry leader. Tell us, what are the big things? What should we be keeping in mind?

AN: Well, I think when it comes to sustainable business practices, it begins with a curiosity, and I think the insatiable appetite for more information and more understanding. We like to consider ourselves as students, curious students of sustainability, and I think that if you keep that mindset and hold on to that mindset, there are just endless opportunities from a business and a business model perspective.

Approaching it from that direction, we really are very focused on not only the environmental sustainability aspects of our products, which have been a significant investment for us and a significant focus over the years but particularly in the past five to 10 years, and understanding the chemistry of our products, which is a significant learning and an ongoing learning for us. So, we begin there, and invest in understanding the lifecycle impacts of our products and then (in) ways that we can ensure that our products have a second life through either recycling or reuse.

With those three platforms in mind, that's the beginning of all of the thinking that we do around our product development side around sustainability. But I think more and more, we're interested in -- what are the innovation opportunities and how do we start truly braiding and integrating the social, environmental and business model aspects into total design solutions?

We're thinking about sustainability as being the ultimate systems design problem: How do we weave these three elements together to really innovate? Because I think that's where we believe the future of sustainability opportunities will be -- as the innovation opportunities provided by thinking about it differently.

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