Joss Tantram
Context and Capitals – The Next Big Things in Corporate Sustainability
New Metrics / You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” - Joseph Goldstein Context is a game-changer for sustainability professionals and for the businesses that they work with. A dramatic statement is often a good way to start an article – and sometimes they are justified; this piece explains why I think that context heralds big changes for the practice of sustainability and CSR. - 6 years ago
Money Talks – the Dark Secret of the Sustainability Event Circuit
Marketing and Comms / “...almost all fortunes are made out of the capital and labour of other men than those who realise them.” - Lysander SpoonerDo you have to pay to play?If you are a sustainability practitioner and attend events on the topic – do you know the approach those events take to recruiting speakers, and do speakers have to pay to play? Do you know which experts are onstage because of their marketing budgets and which are there on merit? - 7 years ago
A Planetisation of Finance: The Earth as a Going Concern
Product, Service & Design Innovation / “We have statesmen and politicians who profess to guide our destinies. Whither are they guiding our destinies?”— H.G WellsValuing continuing existenceIn recent decades considerable effort has been invested into describing and identifying the planet’s natural environment in terms that can be appreciated and integrated into the language of economics and finance. - 7 years ago
Utility – the Fundamental Metric of Social Impact
New Metrics / “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”— John DonneIs the world a better place because we exist?Socially useful business is neither a new idea nor one that is particularly at odds with the fundamental point of business — to sell things that people want or need.However, demonstrating social utility has becoming rather a burning issue in recent years, spurred not just by the slow growing questioning of the current mode of international capitalism but also by the rather more pointed challenges to the purpose of whole sections of the economy raised by the recent financial crash. - 7 years ago
What Do We Need to Agree Upon in Order to Work Together? The Principle of Minimum Consensus
Collaboration / “We build too many walls and not enough bridges.”— Isaac NewtonI agree 100%How many times can we honestly say that we really agree 100 percent with someone else on an issue? Often this is because finding points of disagreement with other people is one of the ways that we establish legitimacy and expertise in addition to our sense of self.Put simply, whilst we might almost totally agree with someone on an issue, we can also be motivated to find and highlight the nuances of where and how our understanding (unrecognised genius) and clear thinking provides us with a more accurate, pragmatic or relevant analysis. - 7 years ago
Sustainability Context: The Elephant Is the Room
The Next Economy / “How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?”Dwight D. EisenhowerThere is much more to be said on the issues of context-related sustainability, Planetary Boundaries and the multiple capitals approach than is included below. We intend to evolve and publish some further ideas on the challenges and opportunities of measuring and locating absolute sustainability in the context of the planet’s limits in further blogs in 2015 (and perhaps beyond). - 8 years ago
Show Me the Money: Sustainability and Financial Outperformance
Product, Service & Design Innovation / “The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. Its province is to assist us in making available what we are already acquainted with.”— Ada LovelaceAt the leading edge of sustainability best practice some leading companies are already developing meaningful pathways towards truly sustainable business models. For the followers, there is perhaps a perceptible acceptance that sustainability is an important aspect of good corporate management. However, there still remains a need to demonstrate, within the current modes of capitalism, how sustainability impacts financial performance. - 8 years ago
All Capitals Are Unequal, But Some Are More Unequal Than Others
New Metrics / “Price is what you pay, value is what you get”Warren BuffettMoving beyond one-dimensional capitalism“All capitals are unequal, but some are more unequal than others.”This was a thought that popped into my mind after a number of real-life and online conversations about the concept of multiple capitals. This notion proposes that there is a range of sources of value (capitals) that give rise to economic and social benefits, but that current accounting and economic approaches recognise only one — financial capital. - 8 years ago
Geoengineering: Are You Feeling Lucky?
The Next Economy / “No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness,the good he seeks.”— Mary WollstonecraftI’ve got a bad feeling about this…There has been increasing discussion of late, in the context of the IPCC's latest report on the dangers of climate change, about geoengineering — deliberate intervention in the functioning of planetary systems intended to arrest trends we don’t like or encourage ones that we do.Geoengineering solutions (which might be termed mechanical geoengineering) fall into two categories: - 8 years ago
Discounting the Discount Rate: How Can We Value a Sustainable Future?
The Next Economy / “We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.”— George Bernard ShawA bird in the hand…We know that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. The adage works well, and it makes sense for a hunter-gatherer, but does it also holds true for a globalised species seeking a sustainable future? Under some circumstances might the bird in the hand actually be worth less than a larger number of birds, which are potentially available but currently out of reach?Does the value proposition change at four birds in the bush, at six, or at ten? - 8 years ago
Why 'In with the New' Is Always Infinitely Easier Than 'Out with the Old'
The Next Economy / “Affairs are easier of entrance than of exit; and it is but common prudence to see our way out before we venture in.”AesopThe old phrase tells us that new and old ideas find a natural balance, that the introduction of the new requires that it is also “out with the old.” Indeed, sustainability should be about saying “let’s do something new” rather than “stop doing that old thing.” However, most sustainability practitioners and campaigners spend much of their lives fighting to change existing behaviour. Much time is spent rationalizing unsustainability, rather than doing as Buckminster Fuller advised: - 8 years ago
It's Not You, It's We: Why Values Alone Aren't Enough for a Sustainable World
Behavior Change / “The circumstances of the world are continually changing….That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age, may be thought wrong and found inconvenient in another. In such cases, who is to decide, the living, or the dead?”Thomas PaineIt’s not you, it’s weThe world abounds in theories (and models) of change, from Theory U to Kotter’s 8 Step Change model, McKinsey’s 7S model and many more.At the heart of all of these, and of many sustainability campaigns, is a focus upon the role and importance of values in supporting and driving any form of change. - 8 years ago
What's the Point of Capitalism?
The Next Economy / Every step and every movement of the multitude, even in what are termed enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design.— Adam FergusonCapitalism has no stated end-goal, no clear point or purpose, yet it dominates our planet; increasingly defining the prevailing norms of public policy, enterprise, social life and even ethics. This lack of purpose should be of great concern. - 8 years ago
Beyond Sustainability, Toward Rejuvenative Enterprise
Product, Service & Design Innovation / The future that’s coming…The human population is set to grow to more than 9 billion by 2050. What sort of world do we want for new arrivals? One of scarce resources and extreme competition for the basic elements of survival, or one in which they are able to build stable and meaningful lives for themselves and their children?The future we can build…The time has come to build a world where we can welcome 9 billion people rather than fear their arrival. A future of healthy and thriving ecosystems and 9 billion capable citizens is an ambitious vision and a powerful driver for the development of economies, businesses and societies. The companies that will build such a future will be rejuvenative enterprises. - 8 years ago
The Times They Aren't a-Changing
Marketing and Comms / We are at a point in our species’ history when the need for change has never been stronger. Therefore it is with some frustration that the change we require remains ever out of reach, trampled by business as usual.At every sustainability or CSR conference a plethora of gurus will tell you that sustainability and CSR types use the wrong language, are too techy, are too interested in the difference between GRI G4 and G3.1 or are too immersed in the internecine antics of the IIRC and SASB. - 9 years ago
Vitality! How Life Makes the Best of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
New Metrics / “There is no wealth but life.”John RuskinThe magic of lifeThere is much we do not know about how life works to transform the basics of matter and energy into complex materials and massively diverse interdependent systems.Despite many miraculous advances in science and technology, our manufacturing and production is often shamed by the scale, simplicity and systemic safety of life.Arthur C Clarke’s famous quote — “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” — applies just as much to the wondrous technology of life as it does to as yet only imagined technology of a myriad science fictions. - 9 years ago
Entropic Overhead: Measuring the Circular Economy
New Metrics / Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.— Charles BabbageDo you break the timer when your boiled egg is cooked?Our economy does; it is like a broken hourglass. We collect together valuable materials, apply energy and labour, put them into products that have yet more added design and brand value and spew them out into the world before starting again (mostly), from scratch.This of course would all be fine if scarcity was not a problem: If the materials, energy and inputs we rely upon for industrial production were either eternally abundant or safe to distribute and use. However in our current industrial models this is simply not the case. - 9 years ago
More Life Now! A Manifesto for Rejuvenative Technology
Product, Service & Design Innovation / At a time when authoritative studies highlight our lack of progress on existing environmental goals and the scale of the threats we may face, we need to turn away from incrementalism, from rationing our unsustainability, towards new models of technological and economic innovation. - 9 years ago