Environment, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation: Systems Efficiency Strategies for Industrial and Commercial Facilities

Abstract:     
Many managers are unaware of the strategic advantages and cost savings possible through systems analysis as applied to material, energy, and water use in building design and operation. This technical note provides whole-systems strategies for improving resource efficiency in industrial and commercial buildings. Green building, sustainability, environmental concerns, and resource efficiency are among the topics covered. The note explains systems thinking and integrated, multidisciplinary methods that can stimulate innovation in both the equipment (technical) systems that make up facilities and the human (organizational) systems involved in the design-build-operate process. Identifying and using key leverage points and systemic synergies can dramatically increase the performance of buildings and the groups of people who make and run them. In practice, these approaches have saved money, reduced environmental impacts, improved worker health and productivity, attracted new employees, greatly decreased operating costs, and, in some cases, even decreased capital costs while adding little or nothing to initial costs.

Keywords: environment, entrepreneurship, environmental issues, systems analysis, sustainable business, innovation

JEL Classifications:

Case and Teaching Paper Series