Wal-Mart's Widening Lens of Sustainability

The following Social Innovation Conversations podcast is produced by the Center for Social Innovation at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Andrew Ruben & Jib Ellison
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
Lens of Sustainability
[runtime: 00:54:16, recorded 2006-12-07]

 
At the time of this audio Andy Ruben was the Vice-President for corporate strategy and sustainability at Wal-Mart. He is now head of Branding at Sam's. Jib Ellison is the founder of Blu Skye Sustainability Consulting which is characterized as Wal-Mart's sustainability partner. The conversation was moderated before Stanford MBA students.

The central theme of this audio is made by Ellison early in the conversation.

"The greatest untapped source of competitive advantage in our time - in [the United States] in particular - is found in ... radical adoption of sustainability principles into [for profit] business systems." (emphasis added)

What makes this all very interesting are representations - supported by anecdotes - by both Ellison and Rubin that Wal-Mart is shifting from its Every Day Low Price mindset toward a broader vision that they call the lens of sustainability.

Ruben and Ellison assert - and, in many respects, compellingly so - that Wal-Mart's sustainability vision is inexorable. And there seems to be a very good sense and understanding - especially by Ruben -  that Wal-Mart's sustainability vision will rely heavily upon trusted information sharing among and between the many participants of complex, international supply chains feeding into the world's largest retailer.

If so, the work of EPCglobal and the W3C will no doubt come to feel the gravitational pull of Wal-Mart's sustainability vision. The question will then be whether these consortiums will develop nimble, architectural standards supportive of data ownership by information producers, big and small. See also Dataportability, Traceability and Data Ownership elsewhere in this blog.

These are the kinds of tools that Wal-Mart will need to overcome the social, political and economic fear factors to information sharing that seem to exponentially increase each time a new fragment of participation is added to a product supply chain. 

The Disruption of Cloud Computing

Any move toward 'Cloud Computing', like any move toward the Semantic Web, will have to mean a greater and greater need for on-demand data traceability that goes way beyond mere password protection.

Listen to the NPR report, Cloud Computing Puts Computer Resources on Tap.

See also Peter Rip's journal entry entitled The Quiet Disruption in Process.

At the very least, data ownership is about on-demand data traceability. That is, knowing who is doing what with one's information when one wants to know.

People and businesses need to feel as comfortable with placing their valuable information into the hands of an online company as they are in placing their valuable money into the hands of their banker. See Banking on Granular Information Ownership.

The calculus is really just that simple.

Facebook Usage Breakdown

In the Facebook chart of activities, below, file sharing is at the bottom. Why? Because file sharing isn't perceived as 'fun'.

But, here's a suggestion.

Give those Facebooker's an interface dashboard for tracking who does what with their shared information - and where their shared information ends up - and see if that doesn't make for an irresistible 'game' of control.

Then imagine the real-world, commercial applications for information portability, information traceability and data ownership.

 

Pain in the SaaS

Here is an excerpt from an article published by the The Economist on April 24th.

"It was bound to happen. One after another, pieces of software have been moving online in a trend towards “software as a service” (SaaS). You can now manage your e-mail, write documents and edit spreadsheets using online services that run inside a web browser .... But now the trend has reached the darker corners of the software universe. Computer-security firms say criminals have adopted the new model too, and are offering “crimeware as a service” (CaaS).

.... 

The new offerings ... take commercialisation to the next level by allowing criminals to use and pay for such nefarious services via a web browser. Just as companies that adopt SaaS no longer need armies of support technicians ... criminals using CaaS no longer need to be hackers. One web-based service he found even allows customers to specify a target group, such as British lawyers or American doctors. Once enough of their machines have been infected, documents and other data are siphoned out of them."

 SaaS provides huge, potential benefits in terms of costs, business efficiencies and customer convenience. It will be the preferred tool of the emerging Semantic Web. The challenge is that it comes with fear factors, too. In Portability, Traceability and Data Ownership I have addressed some of those fear factors.

"The value proposition of data ownership is that it provides the most acceptable technological and socio-political pathway for adoption by ordinary people of the emerging Semantic Web."

For the complete Economist article, go to Pain in the aaS (sic).

Dataportability, Traceability and Data Ownership - Part III

[Return to Part II]

The Value Proposition of Data Ownership

Thanks to Henry Story for stopping by to comment on the XML object examples offered in Part II.

"Yes, unique identifiers are very helpful. But numbers rarely uniquely identify anything. Replace your numbers above with URIs (Universal Resource Identifiers) and you have not only a proven system of unique IDs, you also have (especially with http URIs) a well understood way of dereferencing the information. Then you no longer need a specialised name server. This is what the web part of the semantic web is about [which I wrote about in the Sun Bablefish blog entitled hyperdata posted September 20, 2007]. You then move out of supply chains, into supply networks, which I wrote up in another blog [entitled Supply Networks posted April 19, 2007]." (emphasis added)

The end-game goal of the emerging Semantic Web is to interconnect data so that it becomes a ‘hyperdata’ machine. Nonetheless, as Story has previously propounded, there is more to it than technology. There is also the need for policies or other non-technological means that address “who should see what data, who should be able to copy that data, and what they should be able to do with it.”

For some people the Semantic Web will be a technological wonder to behold. Others will be scared stiff by it. Many will feel both awe and trepidation. But not to be forgotten is that people matter more than the Web, itself. A Semantic Web that people view as outside of their control will be a machine that can only become a shadow of its full potential because people, businesses and, yes, even governments will not fully participate.

Previously, in Banking on Granular Information Ownership I offered this.

"People are comfortable and familiar with monetary banks. That’s a good thing because without people willingly depositing their money into banks, there would be no banking system as we know it. Banks need access to people’s money into order to make profits. Without a healthy monetary banking system our economies would be comparatively dysfunctional, and our personal lives would be critically deficient in opportunities."

The same thing can be said about the emerging Semantic Web. People will need to be made comfortable and familiar with the Semantic Web. Without people willingly depositing their information to this new Web, it will fall far short of its inherent capacity for growth.

Moreover, the Semantic Web will need access to people’s information in order make profits, no matter what the business model is. The opportunities for the Semantic Web to enrich our economies and our personal lives will be diminished without ‘buy in’ by the people whom it is envisioned to serve. The value proposition of data ownership is that it provides the most acceptable technological and socio-political pathway for adoption by ordinary people of the emerging Semantic Web.

It is because people matter more than the Web that ‘specialized name servers’ will play a large role. Using the hypothetical domain name ‘www.toydatabank.org’ I have added the following A-XML example to the continuum of examples begun in Part II. I have wrapped some of the following lines of code, and inserted spacing, for easier reading.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<Pedigree>

<PedigreeID UniquePointer =
" http://www.toydatabank.org/toymfg/Object_IDs/99087 "/>

<ManufacturerID UniquePointer =
" http://www.toydatabank.org/toymfg/mfg_IDs/00372 "/>

<ProductSerialNumber UniquePointer =
" http://www.toydatabank.org/toymfg/element_IDs/43229 "/>

<ProductDescription UniquePointer =
" http://www.toydatabank.org/toymfg/element_IDs/23444 "/>

<ProductInfoToSupplyChain UniquePointer =
" http://www.toydatabank.org/toymfg/element_IDs/66221 "/>

<ProductInfoToGovtRegulator UniquePointer =
" http://www.toydatabank.org/toymfg/element_IDs/66333 "/>

<Permissions UniquePointer =
" http://www.toydatabank.org/toymfg/Permissions_IDs/37911 "/>

<!-- Manufacturer information sharing permissions -->
<OtherData>Document Type Definitions</OtherData>
</Pedigree>

Combine a specialized name server with a centralized dictionary of uniquely identified (and standardized) data elements, a centralized registry of A-XML informational objects, an author-controlled permissions database, a distributed A-XML editor/reader and you have the essential components of what I call a supply chain ‘data bank’.

What does a data bank do? It depends on the supply chain, the social network or, as Henry Story has very neatly coined, the ‘supply network’. The white paper, Banking on Granular Information Ownership, covers much of this territory in a less technological manner with examples applicable to personal health records, food safety, product tracking, people tracking, and transactional tracking.

However, I want to add that - conceptually - the connatural, non-collaborative disposition of technological data ownership is a perfect compliment to the approach that Wikipedia has taken in fostering the collaborative authoring of encyclopedic entries. I say ‘conceptually’ because Wikipedia’s entries are collaborative though non-structured. But what if Wikipedia’s collaborative processes and methods for approving unstructured information were applied to structured information?

That is, what if the information account holders of a toy data bank were empowered to collaboratively add to their data bank’s dictionary of structured data elements so that all account holders may then draw upon them non-collaboratively for the A-XML objects each account holder authors and controls?

Consider that a supply chain member of the toy data bank wishes to add to our toy product pedigree example in Part II the language in red.

Product Pedigree Document
Manufacturer ID = Safe Toy Company
Product Serial Number = STOY991
Product Description = Painted Toy
Product Info To Supply Chain = 0% lead in paint
Product Info To Govt Regulator = Less than 600ppm of lead in paint by weight
Product Child Labor = No child labor used

The supply chain participant, using the toy data bank’s XML editor, authors a draft of the following XML data object  …

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<ToyDictionary_DraftElements>
<ToyProductChildLabor>No child labor used</ToyProductChildLabor>
</ToyDictionary_DraftElements>

… that - if adopted by the toy data bank – will be deposited into a standardized toy data bank ‘dictionary’ of XML structured data elements. These would then be available for A-XML authoring by any toy supply chain participant who is a member of the toy data bank. Again, I have wrapped some of the following lines of code, etc., for easier reading.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<ToyDictionary_RegisteredElements>

<ToyProductChildLabor UniquePointer =
" http://www.toydatabank.org/toymfg/element_IDs/12637 "/>

</ToyDictionary_RegisteredElements>

And taking the ‘data bank’ analogy one step further. Let’s say that the adoption of the ‘Product Child Labor’ data element by the toy data bank involves the alternative approval of a central ‘product data bank’ overseeing a larger standardized ‘dictionary’ applicable to products of all kinds (e.g., toys, pharmaceuticals, livestock, food, etc.).

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<AnyProductDictionary_RegisteredElements>

<AnyProductChildLabor UniquePointer =
" http://www.anyproductdatabank.org/prodmfg/element_IDs/73621 "/>

</AnyProductDictionary_RegisteredElements>

In the world of supply chains, a likely candidate for such a central ‘any product data bank’ would be EPCglobal, the private, standards setting consortium governed by very large organizations like Cisco Systems, Wal-Mart, Hewlett-Packard, DHL, Dow Chemical Company, Lockheed Martin, Novartis Pharma AG, Johnson & Johnson, Sony Corporation and Proctor & Gamble. EPCglobal is architecting essential, core services for tracking physical products identified by unique electronic product codes (including RFID tags) across and within enterprise systems controlled by large organizations.

The crux of this multi-entry blog is that data ownership – that is, technological data ownership – paradoxically provides a non-technological ‘something more’ that will be a necessary ingredient to the emerging Semantic Web. It will do so by empowering supply chain participants with non-collaborative authoring of granular, structured informational objects that may remain within the visibility and control of the author even as they are shared within a complex supply chain.

And with that, I think I have pretty much all the pieces I need for a final Part IV.

[continued in Part IV]