Total Innovation Podcast

Ep 25 Fernanda Torre: Collaborate. Innovate. Act – Together for the Planet.

• The Infinity Loop • Season 2 • Episode 25

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Fernanda Torre is an  educator, innovation strategist, co-founder of Next Agents, and one of the leading voices behind Global Green Action Day: a bold international initiative tackling plastic pollution through radical collaboration, circular economy principles, and AI-powered problem-solving. This year’s event took place on June 5th, aligning with UN World Environment Day, and activated innovators from Sweden, Portugal, Austria, and beyond.

Furthermore, Torre is a Visiting Teacher affiliated to the House of Innovation at the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), faculty in the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship (SSES) where she teaches Trendspotting and Future Forecasting, and directs the global program on entrepreneurship education SSES Learning Lab Roundtables.

Torre is moreover the Operations Director and one of the founding members of Boards Impact Forum, the Nordic chapter for the Climate Governance Initiative from the World Economic Forum.

Torre has done research on the intersection between AI and innovation, both in the launch of new projects as well as the corporate governance of exponential technologies. Additionally, Torre is a Swedish Expert in the international technical committee for the development of the ISO standard on Innovation Management. She is also a founding member of the Speculative Futures Chapter in Stockholm.

Simon Hill:

Welcome everyone to this very special episode of the Total Innovation Podcast, where we explore the systems, mindsets, and tools needed to drive real innovation in a rapidly changing world. As always, I'm your host Simon Hill. Today we're talking sustainability, global collaboration and innovation in action With us is Fernanda Tore educator innovation strategist, co-founder of Next Agents, and one of the leading voices behind Global Green Action Day. A bold international initiative tackling plastic pollution through radical collaboration, circular economy principles, and AI powered problem solving. This year's event took place recently on June 5th, aligning with the United Nations World Environment Day. Activated innovators from Sweden, Portugal, Austria, and beyond. It was truly global. In today's episode, we're going to unpack how Global Green Action Day came to life. What makes it different from other sustainability efforts, the world, the real world outcomes from this year's action day. It was a fun and impactful day, and how all of this fits into a broader, more complex landscape that is now being shaped, unfortunately, by some major geopolitical shifts. Mm-hmm. Also into the growing climate and maybe somewhat anti-climate sentiment. So some big topics, some tricky topics, and some crucial topics to talk through. And with that, let's get into it. Welcome to the show, Fernanda.

Fernanda Torre:

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Simon Hill:

Very excited to have you and congratulations on what you guys pulled off recently. So, Fernando. We've known each other for a little while and it was a pleasure to collaborate with you in a part, at least on Global Green Action Day recently. But for those that don't know you or don't know much about Global Green Action Day, can you just do a quick introduction?

Fernanda Torre:

Yeah, absolutely. Um, yeah, we've, we've known each other for, for some time. Uh, I used to to do innovation management at students, so I was implementing their, uh, open innovation program. So, so it was, uh, knowing about wazo, who was a natural connection there. Uh, but my background is also, um, related to innovation. Uh, so at stor, so very much related to bio biomaterials and their, their transformation, finding materials that are, um, um, alternatives to ma to materials based on, uh, fossil fuels. Um, but I also have a background from the Stockholm Resilience Center creating. Um, leadership programs for them or with the Swedish Institute. So I have been working quite a lot on this interface between sustainability and innovation. I. I am, I also work a lot with corporate boards, and then I also, uh, teach, so I'm affiliated to the Stockholm School of Economics and the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship. So quite a bit of a mix of about kind of teaching and driving innovation and sustainability together. Um, and that's also very much the essence of the Global Green Action Day. So just to give you and the listeners a very short overview of what happened, um, we had. Online training that, um, was going on for, for, um, for some time. We had some warmup sessions and those were open. We had the training three modules, um, on, um, innovation, strategy and regulation. Um. Decarbonization and circular economy, and the third one on AI for sustainability and building on that training. We got together on the 5th of June to work on challenges that were brought up to us by organizations, public and private. And like you said, this happened in, uh, different locations. So we were in Portugal, in Austria, and in Sweden, as well as online. So very much this mix of action and training.

Simon Hill:

It's a nice mix and you know, with your background probably to be, to be expected as well. Before we get into the weeds of then of how that day unfolded, um, let's talk a little bit about background aside. What inspired you and your partners to want to create. Global Green Action Day. We could have just done this nicely in Stockholm or somewhere else, but guys decided to take this on across multiple cities on one day with multiple different businesses. And how did it evolve into that sort of international cross sector movements that, that, that recently took place?

Fernanda Torre:

That's a great question. It's, it's really interesting, you know. Looking, looking back when, when we were younger, we're still young, but a bit younger. You know, there was very much this, um, this way of thinking about things. This think global act local. And I think it's very much the opposite, that if we really want to make a change, we need to think global, uh, think local, but act. Act global. So, you know, have in mind your local context, your local partners, your local ecosystem. But in order to move the needle, we need to have scale. We need to be able to really change things. So, um, the founders for Global Green Action Day was myself, um, and ev. Amir is also in Stockholm and Avelina is in, um, is in Austria. And we were a bit frustrated by the lack of action generally, uh, and we just really wanted to try to shift the discourse that we see that sustainability is a cost. It's just a nuisance. It's a cost for organization. It is something that you have to do just because of regulation and, and that, that it's not really bringing value to organizations. It's really the opposite. Sustainability brings a lot of value, if we put it in this context of innovation, sustainability driven innovation. So it's very much about. Showing to organizations and to individuals that by connecting sustainability and innovation, you can really, really drive value.

Simon Hill:

Yeah, and I think, I think that we did a good job of that by cur, curating and coalescing a lot of different individuals on both sides of that. Discussion over, over time. So this wasn't, but this wasn't a campaign, right? It wasn't a, as you said, there was training in advance, and maybe you can talk a little bit about what that training was, was there to do and why you guys felt it was so important to, to the process. But it, 'cause it was a, it was a coordinated action day, but it, it wasn't really a day, I guess is what I'm saying either, right? No, it was, that happened in advance. There's lots that'll still happen afterwards and. You know, I asked you just before we came live today, is it a one-off thing or is it some movement that's gonna keep repeating and you were unequivocal and it was not a day or one or a one-off. Simon, this is a, this is a thing now and a, and a movement that we're building. So can you maybe just share a little bit around the actual program? Right. Like how it worked? Yeah. And then I'll, and then I'll kind of ask you for some of the standout stories that, that may have emerged, but just, just what would, what did you guys put together and how did it work? Yeah,

Fernanda Torre:

absolutely. Yeah. So, um. Let me try to go back a little bit to try to give a bigger context. So, um, for people that work a lot with innovation, uh, like you and I and a lot of the listeners of this podcast, you know, there's this thing that you go, there's an hack, a hackathon. You get together, you, you create something. And for me personally. The rest of the team, a big frustration that there's some kind of threshold between. Doing something once and it was fun, and actually bring it back to the organization, actually making sure that it's going to be implemented and deliver value in the organization. So when we were discussing this, okay, on one hand. You do want to have that action day, as in you create quick wins for organizations. You show, you create proof of concepts, you show that change is possible, but then we reflected that in order to bring this back to organizations, you also need to anchor it somehow in the organization. It actually needs this training or knowledge so it can actually be delivered and, and, and driven within the organization. Then very much this realization. Okay, we, we, we then need knowledge. We then need training. But this realization that there's so many synergies between innovation and sustainability when it comes to actual ways of working. Let me explain that and try to unpack that a little bit further. You know, uh, sustainability project. It's typically what? Very high risk, um, uh, very uncertain. You work with a lot of stakeholders, uh, very complex. Who knows how to do those kind of projects really well? Well, innovation, innovation management. So the processes, the ways of working. I think we think in the team, uh, Amir Neve, that are very similar. So I usually say that a sustainability project should fail because it's a bad project, not because it was poorly managed, as in it had the wrong tools. So we want by offering the training together with the action day to make sure that the, the capabilities in organizations are developed together so that we are not separating sustainability, goes and does reporting. Innovation goes and innovates without having in mind. People and planet, but that these capabilities are developed together in the organization. So it is very much about this marriage between innovation, sustainability, and making sure that we can deliver value in the, um, in the organizations. So just to go back to your question. We had open sessions, warmup sessions. We had amazing speakers from industry just coming and sharing how they did it. You know, we do it this way. This is how we've implemented, these were our challenges, da da, da. We had the training where we give the practical tools, kind of, you know, very ped pedagogical, this is how you do it, you know, kind of your ABCs. And then we also had accelerator sessions where we brought in very, very specific tools. So for example, we had Catherine AKA coming in and talking about rapid learning cycles, which is this agile framework for, um, clean tech. So very concrete actionable training that will hopefully, uh, help organizations to strengthen their capabilities in this area.

Simon Hill:

I think that points, uh, thank you for that context as well and we'll dig into it a little bit more. But I think that points around sustainability not being a cost or a nuisance, but actually being value and linking it to innovation, which is fundamentally about creating new value, is one of the historic challenges that. I think many things that get coined things like innovation or sustainability have had, right? It's like, well, they're, they're projects. But, you know, to my point earlier, this wasn't a, it wasn't a campaign or a webinar, it wasn't a PR event. It was about trying to pull something together that was the start of a movement that would create value and have real impacts. Right. And we'll talk a little bit later in this discussion around some of the changing narrative and challenges that are coming. For the topic of sustainability at the moment, so let's hold off on that. But, but it's historic as well, right? We, it hasn't necessarily helped itself in some ways by the way that we have approached. The broad solution set and topics of, of innovation about where we've housed it inside organizations, about how we've enabled it or not enabled it as a topic to really, really percolate to the right level of the organization in the right context, in the right ways, right? So hopefully, um, and as I said, it'll get later into this podcast, uh, discussion. You and I talked about this a little bit live on the, on the day at Global Green Action Day as well. I think there were, there were green shoots that are coming through from movements like this and, and, and others as well. Can you, can you, and that cost, topic of value then, can you talk about some of the standout stories or outcomes from this year's event that, that showed that true power of collaborative sustainable innovation?

Fernanda Torre:

Yeah, absolutely. Um, there's a few, I, I was thinking. While preparing for the podcast, I thought, okay, let me be kind of diplomatic here and get an example from each one of the locations. Um, so for example, in Portugal, I think a very interesting challenge. I. Came from, uh, green Lab. Um, they, they, they're really looking, they have this framework for sustainable construction and they're, uh, looking into how to make it scalable. And I think that this is a very good example. Going back to the point that I was bringing before around Think Local and Act Global. It's a very good example of the kind of challenges. That we should be focusing on? How do we scale? How do we bring bigger impact? How do we make a difference? So this was one of the challenges we had in Portugal, um, uh, particularly in Lisbon. I. Uh, another, another really fun example came from na, uh, that's a very complicated name for the Nons Swedish speakers listeners, but that's, um, Sweden, uh, oldest, uh, nonprofits that, uh, focuses specifically in the environment. They are also Sweden's, uh, largest, uh, nonprofit organization. Um, close to 200,000, uh, members and they had this campaign Max five campaign where they are trying to persuade buyers to buy a maximum five new pieces of garment per year. Uh, and I was there when they were presenting one of the teams that was working on this challenge, and then Ana. Uh, that was kind of the challenge owner. She was there listening to the presentation and she was completely blown away. Uh, so what the team took, they took this max five and they created rather power of five because they were saying, okay, max five, there's always, in sustainability, this narrative, you know, that you have to, that, that you have to do less. And young people, they want to do more, not less. So let's put it power five instead of max five. I mean, it worked so well that, um, they, they already immediately decided they're going to organize a workshop there for the headquarters of Naz Ferran in Gosenberg in September. They book that, they were like, we need to continue this conversation. So a very concrete example of, of, of, um. Of a challenge that the organization never even had considered before a different perspective. Uh, and then also a very fun story from Vienna. Participants loved the event so much that they were like. Okay, there will be a follow up in September. It's way too long. Let's organize an after work in, uh, during the summer. So we organize that. You don't need to do anything they were telling to, to you don't need to do anything. We know you have a lot of work. We'll organize it. Just give us the contact we want to meet. So there's, there's thirst. I think people want to do something they just don't know. Where to start, how to do it, and the Global Green Action Day provides a platform to make that, uh, to make that difference.

Simon Hill:

Yeah. I think, I know you were talking earlier about how the tools of innovation can help with those things. You know, one of the things that innovation practices teach us is, you know, look through different lenses, right? Mm-hmm. Consider. Consider whether a problem or an opportunity can be flipped so that max five to the power of five do more, not do less in order to have impact. Is one of those lens flips that an innovation toolkit brings to the, the practice, I guess, right, of thinking through these things. Uh, it, it might be useful, um, to just set the context of how you even got to that short list of. Problem statements on the day, right? Because I think one of the challenges often with these types of programs is there's so many different areas that you could be. Targeting people on, right? We give people the skills, but not necessarily the direction of then where to run. Um, and it could get lost in the narrative of this, that whilst this may have run over several weeks or months worth of effort and training and everything else, the actual session on the day was a few hours, right? And so people came together who didn't know each other with different bag of skills and context and life distractions and, and everything else were put into groups that. I certainly didn't know which group I was in, hadn't done any pre-work. I apologize. Um, from my, from my perspective and in the mix of getting to know new people and, you know, in this case, doing a couple of interviews and other things as well. We were still able to produce, in our case, you know, a very hands-on solution. We did a little bit of vibe coding alongside it to produce an outcome that people could play around with in, in, in. Less than a couple of hours. Right. With, with the tools and the skills that are there. Um, but partly that was because we had a very specific need that we were working towards. So maybe just set that scene a little bit around how you went about getting from. An idea to a collection of willing participants on both sides of that need solution set, um, to, to enable that data to be so effective. Right? Or put, put the question more simply. How did you know what to work on on the day?

Fernanda Torre:

Well, um. I think that's the, this format of blending, training and uh, action. I think it worked really well and it really, really resonated with people when we were pitching it to different partners. So, um, I. What we did is that we, we tried to collaborate with our partners identifying, um, theme areas that were relevant for the training. And those were also then the theme areas that we were working on, the challenges. Uh, that's how we came up with the regulation and, um, uh, innovation strategy, decarbonization and circular economy and AI for sustainability. Then what we did is, okay, let's reach out to, uh, relevant, uh, organizations in this, in this area and ask them for their challenges. And then we used, uh, the was incentive platform to organize all this.'cause otherwise I think it would be really messy. So we, we got people into the innocent platform. They, they could read the challenges. It was a very transparent process, which is also really helped in terms of cred, credibility, right? You see what you're working on and what others have done, and, and, and we want to share knowledge. We want people to be inspired by what others are doing. So then we had all the challenges in the incentive platform and um, people were then assigned to those challenges. So when people met on the day, they already knew the challenge that they were. Working on, and they had had the possibility to kind of read it, go through it still in the day. We gave some time for people to kind of discuss it, uh, discuss it a little bit for, uh, uh, uh, um, a bit more, um, to get a bit more, uh, acquainted to it. And then what we did is that we also used the platform to collect, not just written. Inputs, but try to use different ways to collect the richness of the discussion. Because you know, quite often it's not just the end result that has value is the entire process, the discussions, the different perspectives that may be not, were not even developed, but there could be something there for the organizations. So then we also made a mix of video and. Sound and pictures and text as the, as the output that were submitted, uh, in the platform. And I think that has worked really well to, to bring this, uh, this richness. And then I think, I think we were just really, really lucky on the, on the people we attracted. But, but then again. If you are into innovation, if you're into sustainability, you have to be a good person. It's very hard to attract, uh, people are, that are not passionate about what they do. So it just worked really well, bringing people together and let's do this. It was, it was a very good, um, positive, uh, energy and, and all locations reported This.

Simon Hill:

I was gonna ask what feedback you got from people on the, on the day, um, and, and what you learned around how people collaborates on, on these, on these problems.

Fernanda Torre:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that, um, going a bit into the political discussion also, I think that. People really want to take action. Um, there's a, a, a sense of frustration. You, a lot of people that I've talked to feel a bit lonely in this. Okay, I want to do this, but I don't even know where to start. Um, a lot of people that work, for example, in sustainability in organizations, it's it's teams of one, so you don't really have anyone to bounce ideas with. You. You end up being very much like a lone wolf, and that's really tough. It's, it's tough to drive change if you don't have critical mass within an organization. So that's also this idea of connection, connecting innovation and sustainability. So you end up having allies within the organization to drive this, but you also need allies outside of the organization. People that you can get inspired to. So therefore, this idea of the community and this community, someone, a group of people that you can, you know, send an email, how did you do it? How this happened in your organization. Just having that safe. Someone to uh, uh, um, in, in Swedish, you say Ebola, right? Exchange some balls with just bounce ideas. Uh, it's really, really important.

Simon Hill:

Swedish has some nice expressions like that, but yes, exactly.

Fernanda Torre:

Just pass

Simon Hill:

the ball over, see what comes back again. Yeah, so I, I, I know that, um, on many levels, and you could feel that in the, the pause. I think as you thought around answering my, my prior question that. We're seeing sustainability fall down the political and corporate agenda in many parts of the world at the moment, right? Overshadowed by short term economic pressures, shifting priorities, we might say. Um, and you and I spoke a little bit about this, as I said earlier on the day, I think that pause from you, as you considered it, is reflective of people wanting to choose their words, but also feeling a little bit. I guess disheartened in some ways. Or, or, or concerned. So I'm gonna ask you how you stay optimistic and strategic in pushing forward long-term sustainability innovation in this environments. Um, and then we'll kind of lean into what does the future look like for Green Action Day and within that context.

Fernanda Torre:

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, so I work a lot with corporate boards. I really think it's important to have both the kind of bottom up. Understand operations, but also the top down, the long term mandate to drive change in organizations. I do training with boards. I sit in boards, so I think I have a fair understanding of this other perspective, and it's true. Companies are pressed, bus businesses are pressed. There's so much happening and. There's a sense of, and this is just human right, there is this sense of, okay, if there's something that, okay, maybe I can push this until later, I will do that, that, that, that's how we work. Especially when we are stressed, when we are feeling overwhelmed. So I really understand that, and I'm not, you will, I don't think you will ever hear from me, you know, oh, we just need more regulation, or we just need to tell them how to do it. I know that people want to do the right thing, so. I really think that this is where we need to be stronger with the narrative that sustainability is good for business. Sustainability is good for innovation. It's not a cost. It's really important to, um, differentiate whatever you're doing. Let me give you the example of, uh, oldie, but Goldie of solar power, for example, when you started with solar power, uh, with solar power, um. It was what, I think it was around $300 for a kilowatt. So it was super expensive. And then you did have regulation, you did have incentives. You did put money into the development of solar power, solar power. But you know, come today is the cheapest source of energy, uh, in the world in some locations, according of course, to how much sun you have. It's the cheapest source of, uh, of power. So there is, um. There is the needs to some kind of transition, but I feel that we are in the moment that we need to stop. Pushing and we need to stop pulling. So we need to start, start talking about sustainability and innovation from a different perspective of the value creation perspective. And listen, this is happening either, either the west wants it or not. Um, looking for example to what's happening in China. They just reported, I think it was in March or April. That 10% of the Chinese, uh, GDP uh, last year was, uh, coming from renewables, 10%. It's huge. It's a huge amount of money. So this is happening. They also reported that in 2024, there was a peak in emissions and a, the Cree of 1% in China, uh, which is just, it's too short to make it long lasting, but that, that this huge economy. They spend double the energy than the US by far the largest energy consumer in the world. And that 10% of the GDP is coming from renewables. So it's, it's very, very obvious for me that this shift is coming. Either people want it or not, but it is about who wants to be in the. Boat and drive it. So if we really make sure that companies and boards and management teams, et cetera, understand, and owners also, the owners need to understand this, that it's smarter to make these investments. Now also, you know, Simon, with innovation, you need to start learning, experimenting. That's how you create the capabilities in the organization. The sooner you start it. You start it, the better it is because it's happening. Even if we try to put our heads in the sand and, you know, drill, baby drill, yeah. It's, it's not, it's not going to happen. It's too late. Maybe if that had happened, let's say 10 years ago, I could say, okay, I'm worried. I'm worried, but I'm not worried because it's happening. Yeah. What I'm rather worried is who's in the boat or who's, who is going to stay ashore?

Simon Hill:

I think that's analogous to what, what we were talking about a little bit more outside of the podcast on the day as well, which is the movement from a sustainability team to. A sustainable mindset and capability set across the organizations, I think is somewhat analogous to an innovation team versus an innovation mindset across the business and the organization as well, right? It isn't that innovation happens in the vacuum of an innovation team. In fact, that may be the one place it doesn't happen at all in many organizations. Um, and that that's the, you know, the place that either the skills and capabilities are developed to enable the organization in an ideal world. Or it's the PR front for the organization to tell the tales that it needs to tell for, you know, shareholder value protection or, you know, brand management and, and other things in a less ideal world, right? And therefore, perhaps seeing some of the changes that we've seen recently putting my. Optimistic glasses on means that we fold away from scenario two in that and more into the Get Shit done bracket, which is much more about action and value creation than words and pr, and that, you know, the consumer attitudes haven't changed. The global imperative hasn't changed just because some of the incentives. Now, it might make it harder to find capital. In some instances. It might mean the projects that were not, you know. Either should have happened but maybe weren't run efficiently, effectively. Or they were, and they, and they get killed will happen. But that's what happens with innovation as well. Right. And whilst many will feel like a huge loss or impact, perhaps they could have been done differently as well. Right. And that there's an, there's an onus on us as innovators. To always have sustainability in mind, but not every project should get delivered, and not every project is delivered effectively, and not every project is done by a person who happens to have innovation or sustainability in their job title. Right. They can still be innovative and sustainable in the things that, that, that get done and get delivered. I think you, you spoke about earlier, just to sort of tilt us slightly on this as well. Um, and this is kind of where the global macro and, and global sentiment does play in is this is a complex system, right? It isn't like you can suddenly change one thing and the sustainability ball has been tipped in a positive direction. It could be quite the opposite, even though that one action feels quite sustainable. And I think the skills around system thinking, the understanding of what to measure, and how to measure, and how to talk about that. Is a global imperative that on a, on a global level, we haven't really got to. Right. You know, one of the project, the project I was working on was looking at effectively CO2 reduction by trying to help limit the number of empty trucks that come back. So often in logistics, a truck will go full and not come back with much in it. Right. Like just to kind of simplify that program. There are many things you could try and do to change that, but, but within the system that's complicated. Right. A, it has to be seen to be valuable, but the entire system isn't set up to make that easy to do. The hours that someone can drive the cost of, of, of having them have to therefore work extra long shifts or sleep overnight or whatever it might look like from a per, the personal choices around those things were all linked to the thing we had to think about, not just a. Could you connect something coming the other way, back around again, because that isn't, that's easy, right? Anyone can come up with that idea. The system is much more complicated, the regulation and everything else. And so somewhere in there is a question, I guess around what is the, what is the skills and the, uh, the future look like from, from a systems thinking perspective outside of a single problem set perspective, do you

Fernanda Torre:

think? Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Let me just go back a little bit to, to your previous comment and, and to say that I, I completely agree with you about kind of this shift in organizations from, you know. Innovation, being the work of a team to being everyone's job or sustainability the same, not the sustainability team, but kind of everyone's, uh, job. Uh, and that's why, again, going back, I'm, I, I know I'm hammering this a bit too much maybe, but going again to the training, we need to empower people. We need to develop these capabilities. So again, the connection between innovation and sustainability, when you work in innovation. You know that you need to work with a portfolio. You make an assessment of investment risk, different kind of bets. You can have a system of options or you know, you can manage your innovation portfolio in different ways, but you understand that in order to take something successful to the market, you need to try many different things from the many different perspectives. And this mindset is also very important in sustain, in sustainability. You are not going to solve sustainability with one solution. You know that you need a very different perspective. Now, this is a particular, particularly exciting moment in history. If we connect everything that is happening with ai. It does bring a lot of challenges, but. The possibilities are amazing. Going back to the example of your challenge, okay. If we are trying to rethink how an empty truck might be, uh, filled on its way back to reduce CO2 and like you said, okay, within the current system, we're somewhat limited, okay? But add automation to that, add AI to that, and then you can really completely redesign the system. So I think that the, the possibilities of bringing in sustainability are very exciting. One of the things that I am particularly very interested in is how we create, um, differentiation. So from a strategic perspective, modes around the organizations. Because what's really interesting is with ai, you have your own data, it's yours, so that really brings, um, potential for differentiation. But if you add sustainability to it, well, you have your own. Supply chain, your own value chain. Uh, uh, uh, someone in India cannot copy your supply chain because it, it's impossible. You, you are in completely different places. So if you add, if you are able to create value, because only you have this particular context, only you have your partners, your ecosystem, your supply chain, your value chain, and your data. It's literally impossible for anyone else to copy what you're having The potential for innovation and differentiation is really huge. So if you add that with the possibility to really rethink the systems, I think we're we're onto some really exciting, um. Uh, possibilities. But of course, I'm also worried if we look at what's happening with agentic ai, for example, in terms of, uh, um, decision making power in terms of ethics biases, it, it brings a lot of raises, a lot of issues, um, but. I'm definitely, uh, a supporter of the bigger the challenge you have, the more you need to just talk about it, address it, explore it, test it, try it out. Um, you need to, we need to build knowledge around all this. The same thing with sustainability. We, it does not make sense that we talk about AI and not talk about sustainability together. The innovation aspect is too strong between these two disruptive forces for us to look at them separately. They are two pieces of the same system.

Simon Hill:

Yeah. Yeah, well, one's, I think, one's a tool and an enabler of, of, uh, of, of the other in, in many ways as well. Mm-hmm. Um, I, there's so much to unpick on this, and you and I could probably do an entire separate podcast on ai, AI ethics, sustainable ai, et cetera, et cetera. But for today, um, I'm gonna start winding us towards, uh, towards the end of the discussion. But with that said, by tipping my head up a little bit and looking ahead, right? Yes, there are challenges. Yes, there are opportunities. Yes. The power of of of human capital empowered by automation and powered by it by AI is what we just experienced in the run up to and on. 5th of June. Right? And this is a group of people, as you said, who could have chosen to spend their time anywhere, were not compensated in any way, shape, or form for doing so. And brought ideas that in some of the examples you've said will go, go forward and shape something impactful for those organizations. Um. That were, that were there. Fantastic. So what's next? What happens next? I teased earlier that this is not the, you know, not the, not the end, but the beginning. So, are there plans to expand the model to deepen the impact? Like what is what, what does Global Green Action Day look like beyond the 5th of June this year?

Fernanda Torre:

I, I don't know. And like a good, you know, innovator will prototype it. We'll test it, we'll develop it, but I can, I can let you know what I know or what I'm, what I'm seeing. Right. Um, first we are going to follow up in all the challenges. Participants are going to get the feedback. We're going to look into these ideas. And also we're going to follow up six months from now. So again. This is not something that happened one day. Yay. It was fun and nothing happened. We will go back to the organizations in six months, try to understand what part of the ideas was implemented or not, and the reasons why they were implemented or not. So we, we, we owe to the participants and we owe to the initiative. To make sure that, um, these things are not just one time, uh, events, but that we create value from them. So that's, that's a very practical follow up. We will, we will have, uh, a networking event again with the community in September, just for the simple reason that people really want it, which, which feels really good. When, when you, when you're starting to do something and, and it's the participants that want more, then, then you feel that you're onto the right to the right thing. Um, we, we really want to do the Global Green Action Day. Again, it might be on slightly different format or some, some specific things. For example, today, uh, because we wanted to, we, we were part of the un uh, world Environment Day. One of the activities, but small things, like in Sweden is the day before the holiday, we had so many participants, they were like, oh my God, but I'm only working half day and that I'm already off to, you know, the vacation. So small logistics things. So may maybe the dates we, we, we need to rethink. Um, so, so some, some, some smaller changes. But we have also been thinking about. How to look at it from different perspectives. Let me, let me tell you a bit more about this. When we are talking about sustainability, of course we have environment, but we also have the social impact and we have the governance aspect, right? That's the ESG. We have been playing with the idea of doing a version, uh, for example, just focused on governance, something like Global Board Renewal Action Day. And then we would just be looking, uh, into boards and governance and kind of the same principle, innovation and sustainability. Kind of from that perspective, we have been thinking about the possibility of doing something with social, just looking into things related to labor, for example. Um. All the social, uh, uh, parts of, uh, of sustainability. Uh, but these are just ideas at the moment, let's say where this evolves. But we are definitely going to, um, do the Global Green Action Day for many different reasons. But it just feels, we've done so much of the heavy lifting. We have amazing partners. We have the network kind of set up. We have people like, you know, you and Wako helping us with the platform. We have other partners in all the different locations, and it just feels like we have such a good thing going on. I. Right. You, you end up, you end up wanting to, to have more. It's not really clear on, um, where we are going. And, and I can tell, explain you exactly why, because we're also collecting feedback as we go. Again, you know, if you work in innovation, you do something, you test it, you reflect, you get feedback, you learn from it, and then you develop further. So we are still very much on that process, uh, at the moment. But one thing we know we need to do this. We need to drive action. We need to stop talking and start creating, uh, solutions, empowering people driving change that we are absolutely sure about exactly the, the details. Let's, let's see where we land. We'll,

Simon Hill:

we'll, we'll work them out. Exactly. Yeah. Spoke like the true innovator, Fernanda. I'm gonna, I'm gonna wind us up there and say thank you very much. Uh, that's it for today's episode of the Total Innovation Podcast. As I said, a huge, huge thank you to Fernanda. For sharing not just the story, but the spirit and the enthusiasm, uh, and the systems behind this incredible initiative that she's helped to start of Global Green Action Day. It is a hugely powerful example of what happens when we move through awareness to action or from ideas to outcomes, and we'll see some of those outcomes come to come to fruition. Later this year into next year and beyond. Congratulations and thank you, Fernanda. If today's conversation has shown us anything at all, it's that the best of human creativity and impact doesn't emerge from political talking shops. It comes from communities of action, united by shared purpose and empowered to make real change. That's where the real power of open collaborative innovation lives at the intersection of passion, purpose, and participation. Or perhaps, as Fernanda said. Let's think local and act global, not the other way round, right? To learn more, to get involved or to bring your own sustainability challenges to the table for next year into the future. Check out Fernanda on LinkedIn. You'll find her there. Check out global green action day.com and uh, and as always, stay stay tuned to the podcast. Remember, innovation isn't just about what's new. It's about what matters. It's about creating real value. Fernando, thank you again and everyone. Until next time, keep innovating with intention.

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