Profits - People - Places

AZENTIVE Plays Along: Five Lessons We Learned From Playing Cool Choices

As a follow up to our first post on gamification, we’re reporting on how AZENTIVE fared in our own little gaming adventure. Recently we connected with Kathy Kuntz of Cool Choices at the Emerging Technologies Summit in Ontario and shared the results of our  experience playing their fun online sustainability game! We’re always on the lookout for a well-designed sustainability game, and Cool Choices…

Helping Your Tenants Become More Efficient

Before you leave your home do you check the lights are switched off? What about at work? If you’re a commercial building owner you probably answered yes to both questions, as it is likely you are paying for both bills. How can you help your tenants become more efficient? Saving energy, water, and reducing food waste at work is extremely important and the Environmental Protection Agency is leading…

We participated in and presented at the Emerging Technologies Summit in Ontario, California from April 19 to 21, 2017. One of the many highlights was the synergy between leaders at the summit and AZENTIVE’s holistic approach. In particular, there was a strong call for emerging technology partnerships. As we build such partnerships around Authentic Sun, our full spectrum plasma lighting…

The statistics may shock you: studies show close to 70% of employees across various professions in the U.S. are disengaged in the workplace. Considering employees make up a huge proportion of a company’s costs, it benefits companies in the long term to invest to improve employee engagement to increase productivity. Employers will spend a lot of money to hire top talent, but often overlook the…

In Part 1 of this post, we shared a story of a group of kindergarteners who convinced their school board to approve a de-lamping measure and began a conversation about campus-wide sustainability and behavior change. In this follow-up, we are going to show you how to build a student-led conservation movement promoting resource efficiency. It all starts with core values.       Aligning Conservation…

Sustainability Minimizes Risk and Optimizes Performance

Bringing up sustainability and engagement in the boardroom can be difficult because it can be hard to see that sustainability minimizes risk, typically boosting the company’s financial performance. This is changing as corporations are seeing the importance of, and need for sustainable practices to improve their triple bottom line. According to an article from a senior analyst at GreenBiz:…

Nudging Employees Toward Healthy Habits

Many companies offer programs, services, and other benefits that are meant to support their employees’ well-being. In our experience, the best of the best use proven techniques based on behavioral science, fostering a culture of health and wellness that create the right environment for healthy habits to take root. We all know that changing a habit is difficult. However, we also know that habits…

Authentic Sun Plasma Lighting: Healthier Plants, People, and Profits

It may sound futuristic, but indoor sun is truly here: Authentic Sun plasma lighting. Plants and humans thrive in nature, but we spend massive amounts of time indoors, away from the sun. Chances are that you’re reading this beneath the buzz of fluorescent lights or the surgical glare of LEDs. Without enough sun in our lives, the artificial qualities of indoor lighting systems can negatively…

Gamification, Engagement, and Environmental Benefits

Gamification has been shown to enhance employee engagement by increasing motivation and knowledge retention. Behavioral science helps explain how this works: gaming activates the brain’s reward response and has shown to improve long–term cognitive function. AZENTIVE uses elements of gamification to design workplace engagement initiatives that foster all kinds of desirable behaviors, including…

Behavioral Components of Smart Cities

In our last blog on smart cities, we explored some of the ways smart cities use collaboration, digitization, and cohesive integration of innovations to foster healthy and sustainable individuals, economies, and communities. In this post I’ll follow up with one of the most important aspects of smart cities, people and their actions: The most important “component” of a city and the factor that can…

Technology. Merriam-Webster defines it as “a capability given by the practical application of knowledge.” Our incredible brainpower channeled through business ventures and other institutions creates complex and elegant technologies that manipulate and enhance many aspects of life, society, and our environment. Next-generation gadgets and emerging technologies are like new toys that we grab and…

Engagement From Within: Inspiring and Motivating Your Team

What is engagement from within? Our team recently gathered for our annual professional development and strategy offsite meeting. It’s always wonderful when AZENTIVE team members gather from different locations to collaborate together in person. We reaffirm our purpose, direction, and core values.  Just as we base our client work on behavioral science principles, we also use best practices for…

Visualizing the Water-Energy Nexus

While I was at Stanford University designing and implementing applied behavioral energy efficiency research, visualization was one of my most effective tools. Making energy visible is a key tactic for motivating individuals and groups to notice and reduce their energy use. The power of visuals drives change across the domains of sustainability and climate change resilience. Here are a few…

Engaging Schools Part 1: What Kindergarteners Know About Saving Energy

Engaging schools is a tall order, but kindergartners are up for it. In the spring of 2013, a group of wide-eyed kindergarteners marched into their southern California school district’s monthly board meeting. As proud parents watched, they offered drawings of their school’s cafeteria and, with a little help from their teachers, recommended a de-lamping measure to eliminate over-lighting. Though…

Climate Change Partnerships: A Key Strategy

We created AZENTIVE to empower people, businesses, and communities to eliminate wasted resources; we do this through climate change partnerships. The key to achieving our mission is through a collective approach that brings together multiple types of organizations to address wellness and sustainability issues. This is a critical time for our society to come together to find common ground, and to…

Sustainability in Community: Being Green Together

A community being green means practicing sustainable behaviors and helping others do the same. What does “community” mean to you? Community can be any place where people come together for a common purpose. Do you feel inspired when you see neighbors composting or using rain barrels to collect water for their plants? In this piece, I want to share some examples of how our actions and choices…

Taking Stock: Energy Efficiency in 2017 and Beyond

Endings and beginnings are a natural time to take stock. This new year brings the end of Barack Obama’s presidency and the beginning of a new political era that will change our country’s energy efficiency and environmental policies in ways that are yet to be known.   Obama set a goal  to make all new buildings carbon neutral by 2030. While his cap-and-trade bill didn’t make it to a vote in the…