By Sanjiv Goyal featuring Rahmyn Kress
Cause and Effect: The Cost of Doing Business
There is a new conversation forming around sustainability, contribution, and cause and effect. A world-wide awareness is unfolding. We are being forced to deal with the consequences of our actions, and the way we do business is shifting as a result. I sat down with Rahmyn Kress, founder of the Human Capital Network, to find out what we can expect from the next wave of business model innovation.
COVID 19 has made us realize we don’t exist in a vacuum separated by borders, genders, and socioeconomic status. We are learning to examine the effect of every choice we make, whether that choice is about what we eat, how we dress, whether we exercise, or the people we associate with.
Collectively we are waking up to the cost of consumption for the sake of consumption. Survival mode has stripped us down to the bare essentials. As a society, we are being disillusioned about what we truly need to be happy. This type of careful consideration is long overdue.
There is no more room for greenwashing and passing the buck. In the information age and with the prevalence of online reviews, consumers have gotten wise. Hopefully, we will enter an age of total industrial transparency so consumers can make informed ethical decisions. I believe at their core people want to make socially and environmentally responsible choices, but they’ve been misled and misinformed. Doing things right and doing the right thing aren’t always the same.
The pandemic can be viewed as an opportunity to make the changes required rather than an external force requiring us to compromise. As Kress so eloquently stated during our discussion, the awareness creates an expectation and the expectation drives the demand.
Now businesses have a social corporate responsibility to offer eco-friendly and ethical choices to their customers. Every industry is pressed to have an answer to questions of sustainability. Kress noted, “A sustainable strategy has to be profound, transparent, and measurable… It’s about measurable outcomes, and verifying that your actions are making a difference.”
Purpose-Driven Business Is the Way Forward
Purpose and profit aren’t mutually exclusive. We are headed toward an economy in which purpose will be a prerequisite for profit. “If you have a business right now without an ESG strategy, if you’re not purpose-oriented, if you’re not becoming a sustainable, value-creation organization, then your audience will not buy from you.”
The bottom line is sustainability is good business. We are no longer going to be in an economy that is supply-oriented, producing in hopes of finding a buyer (i.e. creating solutions first and looking for the problems later). The new economy will be based on demand-led principles.
Work Together is the New Kill or Be Killed
Along with the transition into sustainability and full supply chain disclosure, there is a shift coming towards symbiosis and teamwork. The competitive business model of getting ahead and staying ahead is losing popularity.
The emerging one will be built on systems that benefit everyone involved; a mutually beneficial network of support versus a winner-takes-all race to the top. Success in the new model will depend on transparency, sustainability, building networks, and holistic integration.
Consumers are looking past the financial cost of a product to the real cost of producing it: environmental degradation, human rights violations, and unsustainable practices. With the whole world going online and the dissemination of information through sources outside of the mainstream media, people are coming to understand that what they have been sold is largely an illusion.
It will take diverse teams of people coming from all walks of life to create the solutions and systems that take us into a better future. As Kress put it, “I’m a big believer that some of the biggest problems in the world cannot be solved by one individual.” It takes different types of people each with their own unique wealth of experience collaborating in order to have an impact on a global scale.
Reframing Innovation
The word “disruption” gets thrown around a lot when it comes to innovation. Kress posited, “It’s not about disrupting so much as invoking change, creating something new, and acting as a catalyst to show that things can be done differently.” Again the reframe is from a self-focused, winner-takes-all perspective to a group-focused service-based intention.
It is important to clarify that innovation in this sphere isn’t solely associated with technology. Business model innovation may require the use of tech as a tool, but the technology isn’t driving the innovation. People asking the right questions, accountable agents of change, and curious minds seeking to engineer solutions to problems are the ones driving innovation.
The Ethical Use of Tech and AI
Technology must be used ethically to bring innovative visions into existence with integrity. AI and machine learning especially calls for a protocol agreement like TCP/IP.
I see a need for a discussion around this internationally, between the government and the private sector in the near future. Agreements and regulations, foster a safe space for innovation and expansion to happen. In an environment of trust, creativity, and innovation increase.
As Kress put it, “Tech is an incredible thing but we are at a point where we shouldn’t be using it in order to satisfy and create fictitious desires of people to own something that they quite frankly don’t need, but rather to use it and have it as a backbone to do good.
There is much talk, and has been for years now, about the power of intention. On an individual scale, it is easy to see the incredible transformations that take place when people are mindful of their intentions. If we apply this on a systemic level, at the level of industry and government, I believe we would see major shifts happen in the world for the better.
Moonshots and Mars-shots
Some argue that space exploration and going to Mars shouldn’t be top priorities when we haven’t figured out the many issues facing our own planet. However, having an ambitious goal with implications for expanding the limits of what we believe to be possible can be a powerful catalyst for innovation.
When man landed on the moon in 1969, a wave of innovative breakthroughs swept the world. The act of pushing a barrier that big shows us that most boundaries only exist in our minds. If the will and the ambition and the tenacity are there, we can accomplish things thought to be impossible.
The benefit of landing on the moon wasn’t that it was directly useful to mankind, but that it was inspiring and made us question our beliefs about what we are able to accomplish. If going to Mars is what it takes to trigger a movement for us to focus on what we need to fix here on Earth, it will be worth it.
