Design a product to fight climate change.

Clarification & Understanding

What is our rational or motivation for doing this? I mean obviously climate change is bad but is there some company wide strategic initiative we need to align with or a specific area we should focus on? What do we mean when we say "fight"? Let's focus on raising awareness about climate change.

This is obviously a global issue so let's build a solution that can be used around the world.

When we say product, is there a specific type of product we're building here? Like, a physical consumer good or a mobile application? None, we can choose. We'll see where we end up but I'm leaning towards something digital as that will be a lot easier to scale than something physical. Especially if we are focusing on an international solution.

User Segments

It's difficult to design a one size fits all solution so let's go ahead and break down our users into different buckets and pick one to focus on. I think the best way to divvy them up is based upon their attitude towards climate change:

1. Activists - Already hyper aware of climate change and trying to spread the word and do their part to curtail it
2. Moderately Concerned - These people are aware that climate change is bad and impacting the earth, while they will definitely recycle they won't go out of their way to attend a rally or anything
3. Uncertain - These people are aware of the notion of climate change but don't fully grasp or understand it's implications and how it impacts them or the future
4. Deniers - Think climate change is a hoax and are vocal about it
5. Unaware - Completely unaware of what climate change is, this is a very small minority of people and I'm just including it for completeness' sake. Picture the Sentinelese people

Out of the above user segments, I'm going to suggest we focus on building out a solution for people who are uncertain about climate change. Globally speaking, I imagine this is going to be largest user segment and will give us the largest opportunity for raising aware about climate change with our solution. The majority of children and teenagers, who are the most impressionable, are going to be part of this user segment.

Needs / Pain Points

Now that we've picked out a user segment to focus on, let's go ahead and talk about some of their pain points and needs:

1. Climate change is kind of amorphous, hard to understand it's impact
2. There is a lot of "fake news" out there and climate change deniers, difficult to know whats true and what isn't
3. Tough to tell how much of a difference they can make as an individual

Out of the above pain points, I'm going to suggest we focus on addressing point #2. With the internet and the proliferation of social media, it has become increasingly easy to spread misinformation and "fake news" as we've witnessed during this last presidential election. I think this is the kind of pain point we need to go ahead and address now before it becomes an even bigger issue down the road.

Solutions

1. Is this true? -> Users can submit screenshots or links to articles they've seen online about climate change that they are skepitcal of and then we'll manually review them then send the user a response back with whether or not the information they're looking at is legitimate.
2. Green Emblem -> Leed accredits buildings that are sustainable and gives them a plaque to display denoting as such. We could create a digital badge that we would dole out to different websites and resources verifying them after we've checked their credibility and the veracity of their content.
3. Green Truth Feed -> This would be a climate change focused news site that would not create its own content but contain links to other news articles that have already been vetted and reviewed for accuracy. 

Prioritization

In all likelihood we won't have the bandwidth to build out all three solutions in parallel so let's go ahead and choose one to prioritize. To help us make this decision, I'm going to use the following comparison matrix:

Ease of implementation, User Satisfaction

1. C+, A-

2. B-, A-

3. A-, B

While I think Solution #1 does a good job of solving the user's pain point by bringing lucidity to whatever piece of information the user is skeptical of, I just don't think it is going to be particularly scalable. I see users wanting feedback in real time and unless that piece of information they're questioning has been submitted before there is going to be a decent turn around time on us verifying the truthfullness of the information and by that point the user may no longer care and their attention is else where.

The issue with the Green Truth Feed is that its a separate destination. In reality users are going to encounter a lot of misinformation on a variety of different websites and we won't be able to intercept the misinformation from reaching or influencing users outside of our website. Unless this is something you are passionate about you wouldn't go out of your way to seek out the Green Truth Feed.

I like Green Emblem the best and I think it is the solution we should prioritize for a couple of reasons. First of all, it does a really good job of directly addressing the fake news pain point by immediately clarifying marking credible information as not fake. Second of all, unlike the other two solutions this Green Emblem could really be ubiquitous. The Green Emblem could appear on a variety of news sites and platforms, wherever the users are.

As great as it is there are still a couple of challenges with the Green Emblem solution. If we've verified a news organization is Green Emblem worthy in the past how do we continuously reverify that they've continued to maintain their journalistic integrity and only publish the truth about climate change? We would have to continuously audit information sources displaying our Green Emblem which would be a heavy load. I think for an MVP we could take a brute force approach of doing manual verifications starting with the most prevalent, but then down the line some point in the future build out an algorithm to automatically verify the legitimacy of different sources.

Summary

In order to help raise awareness about climate change we are going to focus on solving the fake news and misinformation problem plaguing people who are uncertain about and haven't fully understood the implications of climate change. Our product, Green Emblem, will display a digital badge on different websites and resources who we have audited for accuracy in relation to climate change.

Questions

* When you say product, is this a physical product?  Is it a digital product?  Is it a service?  Or a combination or one / multiple of these?

* What dimension of climate change do we want to fight?  What are the contributors that we want to address with climate change?

* What is the global scope of where we should be fighting climate change?  Are we fighting change across the globe?  Only in the US? North America? etc?

* What are our constraints with this product?  What is the level of funding?  When would attempt to launch the product?

* Are there any other products / lines of business / specialized knowledge within the business that would lend themselves to creating this product?

* Are we looking to build, or is buy an option?

Interviewer feedback

Let's say that interviewer indicates there are no limits on the product, it can be any type of product to fit the need.

Let's say for climate change we want to address global warming in some way.

There are no constraints for the product, the company is all in.  The timeline can be set by us, but we want a product that is sooner than later (in general)

The business is a large conglomerate, well funded.  There are some product lines within the Electronics space, and renewable energy - wind & solar both.

We aren't looking to buy at this time.  Preferring to use a creative approach or technology to solve problems in a different way.

Goals

First, I'd like to understand the goals of this product to fight climate change.

What are the business goals? How will we know if this product is successful?

What are the revenue goals, if there are revenue goals for this product at all...

Interviewer feedback

Let's say there aren't specific revenue goals for the product for the first five years.  This project will fall under R&D with a reasonable budget, with the hopes that a product will emerge out of R&D as soon as possible.

For climate change goals - we can set those targets based on the product we choose.

What are some of the main buckets of use cases

* Energy

* Recycling

* Biodegradable Products

* Pollution

* Mining

Structure

Now that I understand some of the constraints of the problem, and what are goals are as a business, I'm going to tackle the design of the product in a few parts.

First we'll talk about the potential buckets of use cases, and business models.

Second - we'll talk about the users and their use cases, any gaps that may exist.

And then we'll discuss ways we might be able to create a product that would address those gaps.

"Market"

There are many different buckets of use cases where we could look to create a product.  A couple that come to mind - pollution, recycling, alternative forms of energy, mining, and biodegradable products.

Pollution - generally this is an area where we could make a difference by changing policies in our business and the businesses we work with (possibly), which would have some impact but may not have the biggest impact possible.  A big part of pollution is influence on a global scale, it might involve lobbying, it might be tied to how influencial we are as a business, and even then to address that on a global scale may be a long term time horizon.

Biodegradeable Products - This is another space that holds a lot of promise - consumer packaging in particular.  But, if we aren't already in this space with the talent, logistics, and supply chain, this might be a big leap to tackle on our own without partnering with another business.

Mining - In order to make some impact on climate from this space, we'd be looking at reducing emissions, fuel consumption, electricity usage on site / transportation logistics.  A space that we'd need to be selective about entering.

Energy - Wind, Solar, Fossil Fuels, Drilling - Another area of targeting climate change where we'd want to be selective about the products we launch.  We'd be looking for some global / regional policy changes that might incentivize an energy company to reduce their overall footprint.

Of the large buckets that have been outlined for climate change, I think two areas that we might look at would be biodegradable materials or recycling.

There are two larger trends in the world that don't seem to be slowing down:

1 - Need for rigid, but biodegradable packing materials for shipping goods

2 - Worldwide shift to electric vehicles away from fossil fuels, options to recycle existing battery materials to be re-used.

The first trend I like due to volume and the increasing need.  I don't like that line of business is highly susceptible to price pressures / commoditization, and is a low technology / high operational excellence type strategy.

The second trend I like for the large opportunity in the future for recyling battery material of any kind, current lithium-ion with the positioning to understand how to recycle non-yet-invented battery materials in the future.  This also seems like a ripe area to positively impact climate change by keeping harmful battery material out of landfills, and diminish our carbon footprint by reducing our need for mining of limited materials.

So what is the product / service?

A couple of ideas.

1. Recycling batteries from select devices and reselling that raw cobalt back to battery makers

2. Remote sensing technology that could accurately pinpoint battery EOL

Of the two ideas, while the second idea is promising especially for fleet management, the first idea better fits with our goal to fight climate change.

Pricing Models

For recycling batteries, there are a couple of models we could look at:

Cost plus pricing - We could look at our operating costs and cost of material / acquiring materials, and add a margin on top.  This approach would require a strategy of operational excellence to continue to reduce the costs in the supply chain to ensure our margins were maintained - as well as price pressure from other market entrants doing the same thing.

Penetration Pricing - We could look at penetration pricing, to secure as many customers as possible out of the gate, and try to lock in as many relationships as possible - early. This would depend on the existing competitive market.  But if there were areas where would could add value in the supply chain that improves stickiness and prevents switching, this might be a strategy that would help maintain margins over time.

Business Models

In order to be competitive within our supply chain, we would need to look at unique tactics to support our entrance to market.

We might need to look at a (old) Netflix type system of being able to main in smaller electronics for a rebate.

We might need to look at an auction type service for commercial and individual drivers to load and transport larger shipments of electronic / battery material to bring to our facilities.

We might also need to look at partnering with existing facilities for drop points - Goodwills, Best Buys, other technology recyclers by region, etc. to secure the electronics.

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To Summarize

We're looking at a service to recycle battery material to keep that material from ending up in landfills.  We're going to look at unique, technology augmented ways to streamline the costs of our supply chain to get these materials to our facilities.  We're also going to look at aggressive pricing strategies, leveraging an expected greater margin to quickly secure partnerships with some of the larger battery makers globally.