Implementing niche solutions at scale | Urvashi Bhatnagar | 435

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today my guest is Urvashi Bhandagar. Urvashi is kind of fascinating. So I had a great conversation with her last week. She's the author of the recent book, The Sustainability Scorecard. How to Implement and Profit from Unexpected Solutions. She's an executive. She's in the healthcare space. So it's an interesting blend of an executive that's investing time and energy and effort into thought leadership. So I thought that would be a good basis of our conversation. But welcome aboard today, Urvashi. How are you?

Thank you. Thrilled to be here.

So let me ask you this. So you're a busy executive in the healthcare space, et cetera. And then you decide or got roped into or suckered into writing a book. Like, how did that happen?

I know, spent years just sitting away in a little room typing away. Yeah. Well, actually, it was, it was just by chance. During my MBA, I had a sustainability class with my co-author, Paul Anastas, who's also known as the father of green chemistry. And he, in his first lecture, he spent time talking about the 12 principles of green chemistry and how these principles have driven product and process innovation over the years and are very, very well regarded, peer reviewed, and very well adopted. And I thought, wow, they're so well adopted and I haven't heard a thing And so I spoke with Paul after the class and, you know, we, we discussed a variety of subjects, why this hasn't perhaps made its way to the mainstream knowledge base yet. Sure. Why is it, yeah, why is it considered a niche subject? And also why hasn't a healthcare lens been taken to the product and process innovation and development process? And so this book is an outcome of that initial discussion my first year of my MBA. And I'm so thrilled. It's, yeah, it's been a while since then, but—

Right, right.

But I'm glad that it's finally come to the world.

So a couple things. So one is the book is not a technical academic chemistry book by any stretch, right? It is a general—

Not at all.

General business book. Book, right? Which was kind of the point. But tell me a little bit about the process of writing, what it took, what you might have thought it would have looked like going into it and what you know now on the other side of it.

Yeah. Initially when we thought of the book, we were actually thinking of actually a little bit more of an academic book. But as we went through this process, we realized that there was a bigger impact to be had if this scientific information was finally distilled into management principles and if it was written in a way that was more consumable by anyone, by leaders, by product developers, by startup founders.

Stay there a second because I think that subject matter experts have a choice to make when they're writing or when they're putting out any sort of thought leadership. And it's— to sort of speak in their comfort zone, which tends to be more academic, tends to be more technical, whatever, or actually go through the effort and the energy, et cetera, to make it more applicable, more approachable, more digestible. And that's a lot harder than it sounds, right? So the quote—

It really is.

And I hate the term dumbing it down, but the democratization, if you will, of that is really, really hard, particularly for someone with an academic bent. So I love that this book was a collaboration. So what are the things that you learn along the way, or how many years did it take off your life?

Maybe sleepless nights and all that. Yeah, I definitely revisited my old chem days, but that said, I developed an appreciation for why this breakthrough material in various fields, not just chemistry, but the solutions are present. All across science, especially all across the hard sciences. And I mean, even if you think about the Google Graveyard and—

Sure.

So you have pathbreaking innovative products that are just ready for commercialization. But that doesn't guarantee success. That doesn't mean that once this product is out into the world, it's going to be instantly adopted and people are going to recognize the value and, you know, integrate it into their lives. And their processes. So we recognized that our job did not end with distilling this scientific material. We had to go forward. We had to provide strategies for change management, for board communication. What would an analyst on the ground be thinking if they had to completely revamp their supply chains, if they had to negotiate with suppliers if they had to collaborate with traditional competitors. So those are all of the things that we get into in the book, um, because we have realized that our responsibility did not stop at simply informing the world that these solutions exist.

So it's early in the process because books have a long shelf life, no pun intended. To me, I always look at a solid business book as at least a 5 to 7 year shelf life, right? If not more, right? And so it's too early to see if we've hit all the marks, but what were the objectives? What were some of the goals that you had relative to the book?

So one of the goals, I would say actually, we had many goals, but I would say they all goals lead back to transcending political opinions and preconceived notions. We want this book to be understood for, for being a business and economics book. It is focused on innovation and operations. And so we don't want leaders or readers of any color and stripe to be encumbered by their views on climate change or their views on embedded capital and what it's going to take to create a transformation. We hope we've written this in such a way that it clearly demonstrates mankind's biggest opportunity. We predict that the next wave of high net worth, ultra high net worth individuals are going to be either one, people that develop solutions for climate change mitigation or adaptation and decarbonization, or two, they're going to be investing in them. And so regardless of your opinion, this is a climate change shock and we need to be able to respond as a business because we are going to be the first losers.

So stay, stay there for a second because, you know, a topic like climate change has been politicized and we can talk about how ridiculous that is, et cetera. But it has been, that's whatever. So it's, it's not easy to take a topic that's become a bit of a hot potato So, I guess at some level, one of the goals, and I'm assuming by not saying it that it is a goal, is not to convince the unconvincible on the other side that it's just a coincidence that the temperatures are getting like all these things. Like, no, there's no signs, nothing. Keep walking, nothing to look at here, right? But I like the idea of sort of ignoring that and saying, okay, this is a business opportunity. This is like the internet in 1996. So therefore, whether you, you know, whatever you're doing on election day, whatever, just from a capitalist standpoint, there is opportunity here, right? There's a problem that needs to be solved. There's money that's going to be thrown at it. There are smart brains that are going to figure out new and innovative and creative ways to deal with these problems. So I think that's an interesting piece. What other goals were there for the book? And let me back that up a little bit. Sometimes people's will realize after writing a book that one of the benefits, it might not have been a goal, was intrinsic. Wow, it really forced me to get my thinking together. It really forced me to pressure test my models. It really forced me to figure out the best way to tell a story or something. Does that resonate?

Absolutely. 100%. It forced me and Paul to think really critically about the material that we were putting forth. Because if we almost put ourselves in the mind of a VC or someone who is going to put money down on the next innovative product and think, what really is the timeline for this? Who is the intended audience? So, so, you know, whether we've cited an example or a use case or pointed at a firm that is doing something right or provided examples of promising solutions for the future, we have really gone back to critically evaluate how would an investor look at this if they were to, you know, solely monitor ROI and, you know, market penetration, those kind of metrics.

So stay there for a minute. So what I like about that is you've got— you're really laser-focused as to who the beneficiary and the end user is, right? So a lot of people come in and say, well, this is a really big topic. Everybody could benefit from this. Everybody should read this. And, and Whether that's true or not isn't the point. You can't market a book or position a book to be all things to all people. For the most part, there are some exceptions to that rule, but saying, hey, let me look at this problem. It's a chemistry problem. We're looking at it economically and we want to look at it through the lens of a potential investor. That's really, really focused. Now, the flip side of that is the total, call it whatever, total addressable market for the book is far less than a good to great or a classic, classic business book. And that's okay. People get sucked into sort of the book industrial complex, you know, numbers and, you know, hitting on the list and whatever. And I think the reality is in your world, if the right 100, 200, 500, I don't know what the number is, people really internalized and embraced your thinking, that could be a game changer. Is that right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, everything about this piece of thought leadership has been really intentional. So we're really grateful. I mean, you think about our foreword, we're so grateful Mark Terpenning, the co-founder of Tesla, graciously provided us a foreword. Some of our endorsers, for example, the CEO of Volvo Group and, you know, so Christine Bader, I mean, I could go on. We have intentionally approached people that were also evaluating this book through that lens, which audiences are going to create the biggest impact first? Of course, we want this book to get in the hands of everybody, students, lecturers, and everybody. But in terms of early adopters, people that are ready to consume this book and immediately create a transformation, or people that are asking for this material, that was definitely a primary thought that went into it.

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Yeah, thank you so much for asking. So yes, all of the above are really important. They help get the message out there. I would say there are two things that are really important to us. One is we are in progress now with starting a green chemistry trade association to help support the commercialization of really promising products. And help support, help develop the regulation around it such that it prevents greenwashing and prevents all of these sort of negative externalities. And as regulation is developed, it really prevents sort of some of the things we see in the market today as it relates to—

So an association, I wanna just pause there because a lot of people don't realize that an association is a business model. It's a great business model, right? A, you get to create the standards to be early. You've literally written the book. And associations make money obviously on membership, obviously on events, obviously on sponsorship, et cetera, et cetera. And it is one of the businesses or business models where you don't have to be the first to market, but earlier is better than later.

Absolutely.

Having the, you know, you answer the ultimate question of why you all? Well, we literally wrote the book, right? Associations is really, really cool. Any other business models that you hope to sort of have as an outcome of the book or connected to the book in some way?

Yes. So we also are thinking of starting a fund that would invest in the very solutions that we talk about in the book to demonstrate that they are credible. They are the solutions we need for the future. And there is already a for them. So we hope that by way of one is the advocacy, the speaking and the engagement. The second I would call the association to, to support the regulatory changes and things like that. And then the third is a fund that actually actions what we talk about in the book. We hope by way of these three business models that we would actually create the change that we're talking about.

So we're seeing more and more in the private equity space, in the fund space, in the startup and investment space, a role and a need for thought leadership. Mm-hmm.

Right.

And it's really, really interesting because, take it away from the fund level, but funds invest in companies, right? That's sort of the next step. So when they're investing, you know, the next question the potential investor has, well, what's the use of proceeds, right? So there's typically a couple of check the box. We gotta hire smart people. We've gotta do some R&D, but then there's a big sales and marketing bucket. That usually, not usually, but in many cases can be a sinkhole, right? And I think what a lot of funds and private equity folks and VCs and such are realizing that reallocating some of that marketing bucket to thought leadership yields a higher return and an advantage. So, if an investor came to you, there's a little bit of a self-selection. If someone read the book and said, "Oh geez, there's a fund, I'm in," right? Now, again, we don't want to convert the unconvertibles. That's not worth our energy or time. But yeah, to a subset of people that read that, they get what you're thinking is, they get what your frameworks are, they get what your models are. At some level, you kind of don't have to sell them. The book does a nice job of telling the story in a really rich and deep way.

Exactly. This is— I mean, that's exactly right. Um, I couldn't have said it better myself. It is an investment thesis in and of itself. It is, it is providing— so for example, if if a, even if a legislator wanted to understand a little bit more about this subject and how it applies to—

Sure.

This is a 500-page answer to that. They can get the 45-second version from the foreword, or they could get the one-day version if they read the entire book. So I completely agree. As it relates to PE firms investing marketing budget in thought leadership, I think it's wise. I think where PE is going is that they're finally recognizing that they are designing the future. Leaders design the future. They have an impact on today, but primarily their role is to design the future. And so, if you have a thought leader who is realistic, who is showing you what tomorrow could look like and that ideal state and what you could move towards, Um, while keeping an eye. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I think there's— I think you're 100% right. And I think traditionally, up until the last less than 10 years, thought leadership has been in many instances— not all, I mean, there are a lot of exceptions to this— historical. Here's what I did to be a great leader, here's what I did to be a great manager, etc. And there are some, you know, design thinking, innovation that do not fit into that framework. Now, what we're seeing is using the thought leadership to say, "This is who I am. This is who we are. This is what we believe. These are the macro trends that we see and this is where it's going. Come on the bus or not. Come with us on this journey or not." And we've laid out a hypothesis and thesis. Now, along the way, maybe you hit a bump, maybe you change something in the model, maybe something gets added, tweaked. That's okay. It doesn't have to be a black and white sort of thing. But I love the idea of someone having the courage and the guts to You know, it's one thing to do a 20-deck slide, who cares? But, you know, a 500-page book that's taken you 3 to 4 years of 2 to 3 people's lives, that's a big deal, you know?

Right.

Interesting. Any final thoughts, reflections, or insights to share with others based on your journey so far?

Yeah, I have realized that thought leadership is critical. It helps you design the future. But I think thought leaders that are conscientious leaders, that is, they are focused on mentoring. They're focused on enabling the next Google or the next innovator while having that critical operator experience is, is really what I would call the silver bullet. The, yeah, you know, the magic, right? Yeah, the magic in a bottle. And so someone who has proven their own theories and is able to provide you a vision for the future, I think is a great thought leader. I would encourage more, more leaders to think of themselves as designers for the future after they have definitely proven their, proven their mettle.

I love it. Well, thank you for spending time with us today, Ravashi. This has been fantastic. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thrilled to be here.

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