SPEAKING

Jan offers a wide range of talks about sustainable innovations and global sustainable production.

He is equally happy to deliver brief webinars, lunch talks as well as multiple days seminars.

The important for him is that the participants come with an ambition to change their global innovation and production systems.

The themes below give a hint of his main interests. Contact him for finding a view relevant to where your organisation is right now.

Keywords: Sustainability transitions, participation and transitions, global sustainable production, Value sensitive design and sustainability, mobilising new voices for sustainability

Designing global participatory sustainability processes

Transforming a global innovation and production system to become resilient and sustainable requires a substantial effort by international buyers, suppliers, designers, and product developers. Jan is critical of the traditional participatory approaches. On the one hand, he is firmly in favour of participatory processes and stakeholder involvement. Still, he proposes the processes should incorporate lead users and forerunners instead of the conventional stakeholders only. This is not an easy process for companies and other organisation to design and implement this type of participatory processes in general. The challenges are amplified when participants come from different time zones, are embedded in different cultures etc. Drawing on his experience from designing participatory processes in global innovation and production systems his talks introduce the challenges and solutions about solving sustainability problems in global innovation production systems. For organisations interested in new products, he introduces Value Sensitive Design (in combination with transitions theories).

Getting global multistakeholder initiatives to function

A core passion of Jan is to contribute to getting participatory processes in global sustainability multi-stakeholder initiatives to function. He has a long experience in getting people and organisations with different backgrounds, means and goals together and leverage their synergies. In this talk, he provides new insights into the challenges of getting multi-stakeholder initiatives to function in real life. He is dedicated to sharing his knowledge on the topic with companies and organisations interested in contributing to the global production systems’ SDGs.

Creating sustainable suppliers

In his research projects in different Asian countries, Jan has learnt how operations management tools, combined with insights from organisational behavioural research, can be used to create global sustainable operations among suppliers. In the talk, Jan documents how introducing Lean in global suppliers results in improving productivity and sustainability. The recipe is simple and involves Lean tools in combination with participatory processes. Yet, its only function is they are combined with external pressure from global buyers and top-management commitment. He is happy to share his results on these topics with companies and organisations struggling to make their global innovation and production systems sustainable.

Changing global innovation and production systems

Global production systems need to change to maintain their license to operate in the near future. Yet, in global production systems, simple change management systems tools don’t work efficiently. Based on several global companies’ hands-on experiences, he introduces how companies should address sustainability change/transformation processes in global production systems. He is delighted to share this talk with companies struggling with how to change their global production systems.

Understanding
global suppliers view on sustainability

In global production systems, commitment to sustainability and the SDGs is not more potent than the weakest links. Frequently the global buyers and consumers criticise the suppliers. Still, few have interacted with global suppliers and lower-tier suppliers as much as Jan. Through participation in large research projects covering most parts of the world, including a global ETI-ILO project, he has accumulated data, knowledge and entertaining anecdotes about suppliers and their production and sustainability practices. He is happy to share his insights with companies and other organisations interested in improving the relationship with their suppliers to build more sustainable production systems and thereby contribute to reaching the SDGs.