Highlighting Business Designer Tina Jacobsen

Don’t plan or strategize too much. Make a small change, and then grow the initiative from there. You will quickly learn what works best, and where/how you can make the most impact.

Tina Jacobsen is a business designer that is part of a climate hive at Designit, a strategic design firm with a studio in Oslo, Norway. Her work includes helping organizations innovate their business models, operations and market offerings.

What has motivated you to proactively take climate action at the place you work?

Though I find it super meaningful, interesting and fulfilling to design for sustainability, I don’t really see that we have a choice here — it’s a given. As designers we are involved in making key decisions on how businesses operate and how products and services are made. We have a major responsibility to ensure our designs can be sustainably produced, used and reclaimed, without harming our current surroundings or stealing resources from future generations. It is essential that we see to it that the things we are helping our clients create serves a meaningful purpose — that this new ‘thing’ has the right to life, or this new ‘way’ means genuinely doing better. This is not to say we always make perfect decisions, often it’s just as much about making good compromises, but the aim is always to leave the world a little bit better off.

How did you start? What things did you do in your effort?

Designit already had a solid focus on sustainability when I started, which was part of the reason why I was drawn to the company. The aim at the time was to signal more clearly to the market that Designit is ready to help businesses and organizations make the necessary changes to become more sustainable. We wanted to attract more clients with that mindset.

Specific initiatives I contributed to was conducting a case study to learn more about Nordic companies that on some level have made success on sustainability. I also organized Designit Sustainability Day where we invited companies in our network to come and play. The aim was to learn from each other through inspirational talks, panel discussions and sustainability hacks. We sparked a lot of engagement that day.

Still, the most important work I and my colleagues do is the everyday design for sustainable strategies, services and products together with our clients. That’s where all the talking and thinking materialize to real value in the real world.

How did your company and office react?

I never had to convince anyone to start working on sustainability challenges. I talked a lot about my passion for sustainability in the interviews, and then I was asked to take a lead role here — which I of course was very excited about. Our Nordic managing director Christian Søgaard and the general management team are all very passionate on this topic, and the sustainability initiatives I’ve been part of have always been joint efforts with Christian, the core sustainability team or with Designit designers in general.

What were the outcomes? Were there any changes?

The outcome of the case study was locally-oriented insights on how Nordic companies best succeed in transforming their business models to become more circular. These insights have been valuable when advising our clients on how to do similar things. We have also shared these learnings in talks on internal and external events.

A specific change we’ve seen the past few years is that clients, at least in the Nordic countries, come to us more often asking for sustainable circular designs, rather than us introducing the topic first.

What worked best?

Solving sustainability challenges with a client is very much like solving any other challenge, things work best if we work together. In every project we try to include our client as an integrated part of the group. Once the project kicks off, we are one team solving a challenge together — not merely employer and employee. That feeling is essential for success.

What did not work so well?

I still sometimes feel there is too much talking before doing. I think many companies have great visions and ideas, but struggle to materialize these in their day-to-day work. That of course also counts for us. Setting up a core group to plan initiatives, make ambitious goals and discuss our sustainability principles in internal meetings is important, but when it comes to getting things done it hasn’t been where we’ve made the most impact on the world.

What is your advice to someone starting out?

In my experience it’s always easier to approach sustainability challenges if we first acknowledge that we don’t have all the answers, that we aren’t sustainability experts yet. We need to listen to each other and learn and be willing to go through challenging changes and processes to get there. If we manage to lower our guard and defense mechanisms, keep an open mind and stay humble, that’s a great starting point.

Once the right mindset is there, identify a very specific problem you want to address. It can be a specific part of your value chain, or perhaps one single feature of a digital service. Don’t plan or strategize too much. Make a small change, and then grow the initiative from there. You will quickly learn what works best, and how/where you can make the most impact.

Then again, sometimes radical change is necessary to transform your company in a more sustainable direction. Secure that you have a dedicated, motivated and multidisciplinary team on the task, and you are off to a good start.

Illustration by Zhi Wang

What would you like to see happen in the coming years- what is your wishlist for climate action?

I would love to see more companies becoming more transparent and honest about their state of sustainability. Be proud and humble when sharing your success, but be brave and honest when sharing your shortcomings. We have to acknowledge that we aren’t there yet, or at least very few of us are. Not until we openly commit to walking the extra mile, can we collectively tip the scale toward climate positivity. This will imply we have to make some short-term sacrifices, but the long-term benefits will be so much more rewarding. Let’s design for the benefit of people and future generations, for our environment and all living creatures; as well as for our companies’ bottom-lines.

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Tina Jacobsen can be found at LinkedIn.

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This article was first published on the Hive Initiative Medium account.