Taking The Lead In Social Innovations:
A Talk With Jim Loving, UG ‘76

A few hours before April’s BB&T Colloquium on Capitalism, Ethics, & Leadership, Jim Loving, UG ’76 visited the Center for Social Value Creation to talk with us about his career and current work in sustainable economic development, Smarter Cities, and other positive initiatives at IBM. Loving is a Business Development Executive, specializing in Energy, Environment, & Sustainability for U.S. Federal Government work. He’s a company man, having risen up from an initial position as a Customer Service Representative less than a year out of school to his current post. And he doesn’t dodge around the question of whether you need to have an idea of your future from the get-go— perhaps invaluable advice for any of today’s undergraduates with foggy ideas of what the future may hold.

“I had no idea what I’d be doing today when I was at Maryland. I wasn’t even a business major. I started as a math major, but that didn’t last long. School was fun, and I took the classes I enjoyed. And I ended up with my BA in Political Science with a Minor in Computer Science. And admittedly, unemployed.”

He smiled when talking about how he first started with IBM in early 1977. “Makes sense for political science and computer science, right?” Retrospectively yes, but in the late 70s IBM was not as large of a player in the services sector as they are today. Loving stepped into a company that had only recently undergone internal diversification as a result of anti-trust legislation brought on by the LBJ administration…but IBM was still product focused. They had three separate divisions: office products, mainframes, and general systems, and this was the way things would stay until the early 90s.

In 1993, IBM came the closest to a near death experience as the company had ever seen. It ceded a substantial portion of the market to a rising star named Microsoft, and over a two year period lost a CEO, 1/3 of its workforce, and 15 billion dollars. It was then, Loving says, that he was reassigned to new contracts in the Commerce Department.

“I still remember in those first few months someone using the phrase ‘sustainable economic development.’ And my first reaction was, ‘what’s that?’ I didn’t have a background in sustainability, or environmentalism…but I was interested.”

In a sense, as IBM strategically realigned itself to shift its offerings to the services-software-technology triumvirate of today, Loving had the opportunity to pioneer the forward movement in sustainable solutions. Stanley Litow, IBM Vice-President of Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs, mentioned in his talk at the aforementioned colloquium IBM’s role in many of the social innovations of 20th century American history including the moon landing (Loving confirmed that 25% of the Man On Moon team consisted of IBM employees) and Social Security. In this way it was only natural, says Loving, that IBM applies these principles of innovation to new frontiers of government work and system development.

Since that time, IBM has taken on a number of sustainability initiatives, including the Lean Six Sigma program, Smarter Planet, its Global Innovation Outlook, and the Green Sigma Coalition. And over that time period, Loving explains that the culture has shifted within the company. He himself has taken on additional professional improvement opportunities, including a summer course in Sustainable Economics at the University of Vermont. A number of campaigns, including Conscious Capitalism, Corporate Service Corps, and the Smart Cities Challenge reflect this change. It is not without restrictions, however.

“In the end, IBM still has to respond to market forces like any other company. But does that mean that CSR and sustainability don’t have a part of that? Quite the opposite- in a survey conducted by the Institute of Business Value, 70% of company claimed that CSR and sustainability were important, for reasons like reducing costs, meeting demand, and maintaining a competitive advantage. And IBM as a company, with its technological expertise and record in service provision can apply those prescriptive analytics that allow us to fulfill those responsibilities. We live in a knowledge economy today, and we live in a world of aging infrastructure that requires new solutions.”

“In this way,” Loving continued, “I’m very happy to be speaking to the Center for Social Value Creation. What the Smith school is doing is extremely important, and aligned with what IBM seeks to do. We are both on the leading edge of this innovative future, and by being on that leading edge we are differentiating ourselves already.”

“I’ll tell you,” he laughed in conclusion. “I only took one business class when I was here. Everything I’ve learned I’ve learned in the workplace. So providing your students the opportunity to not only learn business, but learn business in this fashion that highlights social value…that’s innovation.”

Jim and his wife Connie (also an IBM employee— they met each other during Jim’s first year in ’77) live in Silver Spring and are huge Maryland fans. Jim admits, however, that he’s more partial to Terps football than Terps basketball. -GO