In our latest episode, Jim, Neil and Shelley welcome special guest Bruce Uhlman. As Senior Manager, Applied Sustainability at BASF, Bruce leads their applied sustainability team in North America. BASF is the largest chemical producer in the world.

Bruce discusses the reasons why product managers need to be embedding sustainability into their products, the difficulties of accurately defining what 'sustainability' truly means, and BASF's portfolio steering framework (among a variety of other topics).

In this Episode

Shelley: This podcast is about enabling product managers to improve their ability to embed sustainability into their products. Bruce, with your experience, what are some of the reasons product managers are embedding sustainability into products? [01:15 ]

• Bruce: Among other topics within our companies, like safety and quality, sustainability right now is a critical aspect to get a handle on and how that's being integrated into products and engagement with customers. We have huge challenges as a society today with growing populations and climate change, and product managers need to understand how their products can contribute to resolving these issues and how, even at the product level, they're supporting their customers and helping them meet their own sustainability targets and challenges. [01:31 ]


• There are tools and best practices out there utilizing, say lifecycle assessment, that will gather a better, deeper insight, more science based and quantification around sustainability to take internally and work within their entire organization. [02:14 ]

Neil: Have you seen any examples of where product managers have done this and seen success like the way you have at BASF? [02:42 ]

• Bruce: Yes. I think the biggest challenge is because sustainability can be a nebulous term. It has many different meanings depending on what product you have, what your market sector is, what region of the world you're in, even how your customers and your suppliers are defining sustainability. So, you need to be able to quantify and define what sustainability means for your product and for your application. Once you've defined it, then you can measure it. Once you can measure it, then you have the data to support linking that to what's important to your customer, and also linking that to attributes that you're getting within your supply chain and down the value chain. [02:52 ]


• In many cases, product managers may be looking at their product in a traditional manner; looking at the technical attributes and what they've been doing previously that may have been successful. But sustainability brings a whole new perspective to things. They need to educate themselves on what these other attributes are, how sustainability is embedded within their product, and they need to be able to assess that. [03:38 ]


• We've developed a lot of frameworks within BASF that provide that rigorous, comprehensive, and reproducible framework. It’s also transparent on how we define, measure, and create value through these solutions. We understand where the impacts are occurring throughout the value chain, where the trade offs are occurring. [04:04 ]


• We need to understand both the value creation of our products and the risk. And you need this comprehensive framework of how you're integrating that in product development and how you integrate that in your communications with your customers. [04:27 ]

Jim: In my experience with BASF, there's been things that you've done ahead of other companies. What was the process the company went through to move from thinking about it, to BASF becoming a leader? [04:39 ]

• Bruce: Success and being proactive came from our senior management and from our board when we changed our branding from the chemical company to ‘we create chemistry for a sustainable future’. It brought focus into the value that our solutions, which are our products, are bringing to society and the value they create for society and for our customers. [05:12 ]


• Having senior management change our focus around sustainability, had the trickle-down effect throughout our entire organization that we really needed to embed sustainability into everything we do - whether it's our project approval process within operations, procurement, but specifically in product development. So we needed to understand the drivers of sustainability now at the product level and how our products are impacting sustainability, not just within our own operations, but throughout the entire value chain. [05:45 ]


• That's one of the benefits when we developed the sustainable solution steering [SSS] program, which enabled a product manager now to look differently. S/he wasn't just selling a chemical, but was selling a solution, a chemistry that was impacting sustainability at the customer level, at the consumer level, and having impacts upstream in supply chain and maybe downstream at the end of life. So having that structured framework enabled them to really assess things, quantify things and be able to put a line in the sand of where you are now and how you need to innovate to improve that going forward, depending on what your customer needs are and the changing market drivers. [06:23 ]

Jim: If I understand, with SSS you can classify your product into one of five categories and I think Pioneer is the number one, and I think Challenge is the bottom. It seemed to me that that became an internal driver for change. But if I'm a product manager and my product falls into the Accelerator/Pioneer category, I'm going to get more investment money and looking better in the company. If I'm product manager on a Challenge product down at the bottom, what does that mean to me? Is that a catalyst to change? Am I more likely to change because of that? [07:03 ]

• Bruce: As I mentioned before and as you pointed out, having that structured framework of how you're assessing your product in the region that you are, because there could be different regulations, different customer demands, the competitive landscape could be different - are influencing whether your product has a distinct advantage out there or maybe there are some challenges that you see from the competitive or regulatory side. You need to be able to identify those and then put a game plan in place in two years and three years. Maybe it's because of a chemical of concern, maybe it's some other regulatory issue. You need to understand how you can adapt to that and be able to be proactive in addressing that and not reactive when the regulations come out and you find out that you have a serious issue with your product. [07:53 ]


• I think it's enabling us to anticipate, but also be proactive from the positive side in identifying a more comprehensive value proposition that our product has relative to the competitive landscape and how it's linked to what's important to our customer in the market. [08:40 ]


• So, when you assess sustainability and you're using lifecycle based tools, lifecycle thinking, it can be complex and the maturity level is evolving and it's getting a lot more mature here. But still, there's a lot of misunderstanding, misperceptions about chemistries and value proposition, and upstream and downstream impacts and lifecycle assessment. But having a framework like sustainable solution steering enable us to condense that, make it concise and to create value with our customers with that in market differentiation. [09:07 ]

Neil: Bruce, could you describe for our listeners what this portfolio framework is just so our listeners know what we’re talking about? Because we talked about challenged product categories and leader product categories. [09:39 ]

• Bruce: Yeah, the framework we have is portfolio steering, and it's out there that other companies can adapt, and you can get that from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. [09:58 ]


• BASF has that program, and we call it our branded SSS. You get a collaborative effort of people (of experts) together, where you're assessing your product solution in a specific application, in a specific region. So, it takes a chemical and looks at its application and assesses it in all three pillars of sustainability. This is where we're branching out. It's not just a product carbon footprint assessment, but you're looking at multi-attribute environmental impacts. You're also looking at the economic value creation that that product could be having over its lifecycle with your customers or consumers or at end of life. And then you're also looking at social aspects as well. So, we're integrating and aligning an assessment of how that product could be contributing to some of the UN sustainable development goals. [10:11 ]


• So, you get this very comprehensive assessment, and then you compare that against the competitive products that are out there in the marketplace, and you see where you differentiate positively, or maybe where you have some drawbacks. We've quantified those products that have a very distinct and measurable advantage in the marketplace as pioneers, we see ones that are contributing to a lot of these demands that are out there with regards to climate change and renewable resources as pioneers or performers. But we also look at products that we've identified some challenges with and have a game plan to reconcile that and those are the challenge products. [10:58 ]

Neil: This is so cool - as a product manager, if you're looking at portfolios - the ability to say what does my portfolio look like? Is it good? Is it bad? What is also interesting is that it ta