Green Business: Best Cost-Effective Practices by Will Phillips April 2010 In Hammarby Sjostad, a part of Stockholm, residents drop garbage off in neighborhood "suckers." These giant pneumatic tubes move waste food, burnable trash and recyclables to central processing plants. Waste food is composted and burnables become electricity, at least half of the area's needs. Time magazine produced an excellent short video titled: The Future of Green Cities in a Swedish Eco-Town which will challenge your thinking about America's old fashioned approach to garbage and recycling. The concept of best practices was founded on the principle that the best practices for operations, sales, customer service, are NOT likely to be found in your own industry. Instead, it's often different industries and even individual companies who develop best practices, whether it's managing inventory or delivering customer service from a complicated inventory. Therefore, for you to improve your business in a specific area, look outside your industry, study them and adapt your own business practices from what you've learned. This approach requires significant investment, but it often produces dramatic improvements because it focuses on the what and even more on the how. For example, when Xerox wanted to improve their customer service in delivering machine parts worldwide, they studied the business with the most consistently high customer service ratings in the world: LL Bean in Freeport, Maine. Xerox dispatched a team to observe LL Bean for several weeks and returned with over a dozen breakthrough practices which were soon implemented. Respect is critical in this type of best practices exploration. If Xerox thought their business couldn't possibly learn from an outdoor clothing retailer, they would have missed out on some very critical improvements. This approach is reflected at the employee level when an executive or manager is dismissive of their staff, and the learning process stops dead. What can you learn from Sweden's approach to dealing with garbage and energy, or Xerox's focus on discovering best practices wherever they might be. What successful businesses do you know of that you might learn from?