Experiment overview
A workshop designed to challenge participants’ approach to digital product development by introducing environmental constraints as non-negotiable parameters.
The initiative confronted the reality of Earth Overshoot Day - the point each year when humanity’s resource consumption exceeds Earth’s capacity to regenerate - by creating a practical framework for digital innovation that respects planetary boundaries without sacrificing business objectives.
Main objectives
The project approached mindful digital development through:
Environmental literacy: illuminating the hidden ecological footprint of digital activities through an eye-opening presentation that quantified server energy consumption, data transfer impacts, and device lifecycle costs
Resource-constrained design: challenging teams to create solutions using a limited “natural resources budget” where each digital feature carried explicit environmental costs, forcing thoughtful prioritization
Stakeholder conflict navigation: creating deliberate tension between team roles to simulate real-world implementation challenges, where marketing ambitions collided with ecological limitations
Achieved results
The workshop created a microcosm of the tensions between business objectives and environmental constraints.
By assigning specific roles (marketing, strategy, design, development, sales) with competing priorities, participants experienced firsthand the challenges of balancing profit generation with ecological responsibility.
This project purely demonstrated that meaningful sustainability requires systemic thinking rather than superficial “SDG badge” approaches.
Main reflection
This experiment revealed the profound tension between sales goals and environmental limitations that exists in real-world business contexts.
The workshop’s most valuable outcome was making abstract environmental concepts tangible through practical decision-making scenarios.
Participants discovered that reconciling profit with ecological constraints requires fundamental rethinking of business models rather than incremental adjustments.