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...