STRADAR

Google X’s Sebastian Thrun on How To Invent Amazing Products & Change the World “Build it. Break it. Improve it.” That was the Universal Law of Invention as defined by this year’s incredible ALVA Award winner, Sebastian Thrun. From the Google Self Driving Car to Google Glass to the education start-up Udacity, Thrun has led remarkable teams in the creation of products that will truly change the way the world works in the future. Click through the pic of Sebastian above to read the article at 99U.

Google X’s Sebastian Thrun on How To Invent Amazing Products & Change the World

“Build it. Break it. Improve it.” That was the Universal Law of Invention as defined by this year’s incredible ALVA Award winner, Sebastian Thrun. From the Google Self Driving Car to Google Glass to the education start-up Udacity, Thrun has led remarkable teams in the creation of products that will truly change the way the world works in the future.

Click through the pic of Sebastian above to read the article at 99U.

05/17/13
Source: 99u.com
The Experience Tells The Story The Mad Men era of advertising has passed. But what does advertising mean in this new age where there is no such thing as a “traditional” agency? Today, a brand’s communication and engagement strategy is no longer a separate and distinct practice from the design of a product or service. The two are intertwined. The product is the marketing, and the marketing is the product. Click through the graphic above to read Method’s latest 10x10 perspective.

The Experience Tells The Story

The Mad Men era of advertising has passed. But what does advertising mean in this new age where there is no such thing as a “traditional” agency? Today, a brand’s communication and engagement strategy is no longer a separate and distinct practice from the design of a product or service. The two are intertwined. The product is the marketing, and the marketing is the product.

Click through the graphic above to read Method’s latest 10x10 perspective.

05/15/13
Source: 10x10.method.com
Strategy Playbook Everyone’s talking about responsive design, but what about responsive strategy? The world’s become a different place since first planners made their debut some 30 years back. Most importantly, it’s more open, connected and interactive. To fit in, strategy needs to become like that too. Strategy isn’t an isolated discipline or a tucked-away department that makes a cameo in the agency process by putting together a beautiful Keynote or a smart chart.It’s a problem-solving approach and a methodology that can become a critical part of agencies’ growth curve. It can turn agencies into growth hackers for brands by pointing the way for their business in the emerging digital markets. For a strategist, that’s an indefinitely more more interesting and fun thing to do. Enjoy.

Strategy Playbook

Everyone’s talking about responsive design, but what about responsive strategy? The world’s become a different place since first planners made their debut some 30 years back. Most importantly, it’s more open, connected and interactive. To fit in, strategy needs to become like that too. Strategy isn’t an isolated discipline or a tucked-away department that makes a cameo in the agency process by putting together a beautiful Keynote or a smart chart.

It’s a problem-solving approach and a methodology that can become a critical part of agencies’ growth curve. It can turn agencies into growth hackers for brands by pointing the way for their business in the emerging digital markets. For a strategist, that’s an indefinitely more more interesting and fun thing to do. Enjoy.

05/10/13
Source: adverblog.com
When I Was A Very Small Boy When I was very small, a little boy of five or six years old, I was certainly no infant prodigy, but I did do drawings with houses, with vases and flowers, with gypsy caravans, merry-to-rounds and cemeteries (perhaps because the first world war had only just ended) and then, when I was a bit older, I built beautiful, sharp-pointed sailing-boats, carved with a penknife out of the tender bark of pine-trees from Mount Bondone and together with Giorgio and Paolo Graffer we constructed cableways that were even two hundred metres long, that ran from the houses on the river Adige up to the top of Doss Trent, since we had found some balls of paper string that had been abandoned in the cellar by retreating Austrians (or maybe stolen by grandfather Graffer), and later when I was even bigger, aged eight or nine, I made barometers and wooden telescopes in my uncle Max the carpenter’s workshop to measure the passing of the stars, but naturally neither the barometer nor the telescope ever worked despite the drawings I did, of an astronomy as I imagined it and so on. It has always seemed to me the most natural thing in the world to draw and make things. I don’t think I have ever made any great difference between drawing a thing, making it and using it or even between making things by myself or with others. If I felt like making a boat, it was I who drew it, I who built it: and I was the captain in command of it on the Pacific Ocean, defending it from mortal atolli, bringing it alongside coral beaches; when we were together, if we felt like doing a cable-way, it was we who drew it, we who made it and we the “people” that used it. And even when we did things it didn’t occur to us to deliver models to anyone, we had absolutely no conceit, no sense of power derived from the knowledge of what we were perhaps capable of doing. I didn’t feel and we did not feel like designers, or artists, or engineers for an audience and still and still less in front of an audience: we did not look either for consumers, or for observers, nor did we look for agreement or disagreement or anything that wasn’t all inside ourselves.  Everything we did was entirely absorbed in the act of doing it, in wanting to do it, and everything we did stayed ultimately inside a single extraordinary sphere of life. The design was life itself, it was the day from dawn till dusk, it was the waiting during the night, it was an awareness of the world around us, of materials and lights, distances and weights, resistance, fragilities, use and consumption, birth and death…Now that I’m old they let me design electronic machines and other machines in iron, with flashing phosphorescent lights and sounds and no one knows whether they are cynical or ironical: now they only let me design furniture that ought to be sold, furniture they say, that is useful to society, they say, and other things that are sold “at low prices” they say, and in this way they can sell more of them, for society they say, and now I design things of this kind. Now they pay me to design them. Not much, but they pay me. Now they look for me and wait for models from me, as they say, ideas and solutions which end up heaven knows where.Now everything seems to have changed. The things I do (by myself or with my companions) seem to have changed and the way they are done also seems to have changed because, goodbye bright blue Planet, goodbye melodious seasons, goodbye stones, dust, leaves, ponds, and dragon flies, goodbye boiling-hot days, dead dogs by the roadside, shadows in the wood like prehistoric dragons, goodbye Planet, by now I feel as if I do the things I do sitting in a bunker of damp artificial light and conditioned air, sitting at this white laminate table, sitting in this silver plastic chair, captain of a spaceship traveling at thousands of miles an hour, squashed against this seat — immobile in the sky. By now I have to think of things from an artificial space, with neither place nor time; a space only of words, phone-calls, meetings, timetables, politics, waiting, failures. By now I’m a professional acrobat, actor and tightrope walker, for an audience that I invent, that I describe to myself, a remote audience with whom I have no contact, stifled echoes of whose talking, clapping and disapproval reach me, whose wars, catastrophes, famines, suicides, escapes, poverty or anxious restings along crowded beaches or inside smoky stadiums I read about in papers; how can I know who are the ones expecting something from me?I would like to break this strange mechanism I’ve been driven into. I would like to break it for myself and for others, for me and with others. I would like not to have to play the role of the artist only because this way I get paid, and I wish it wouldn’t even occur to others that there’s anyone who gets paid for being an artist. I would like all of us or none of us to be artists, as we were when we did drawings, boats, ships and windmills, cableways and telescopes. I would like to think that the old happy state that I once knew could somehow be brought back: that happy state in which “design” or art — so called art — was life, in which life was art, I mean creativity, I mean it was the awareness of belonging to the Planet and to the pulsing history of the people that are with us. I’d like to find somewhere to try out things, together, things to do with our hands or machines, in any way, not like boy scouts or even like craftsmen and not even like workers and still less like artists, but like men with arms, legs, hands, feet, hairs, sex, saliva, eyes and breath, and to do them, certainly not to possess things and to keep them for ourselves and not even to give them to others, but just feel what it’s like to do things by trying to do them, trying to find out whether everyone can do things, other things, with their hands or machines — or whatever — etcetera etcetera. Can it be tried?My friends say it can.  Perhaps best known for designing Olivetti’s iconic red plastic typewriter, Ettore Sottsass was born in Innsbruck, Austria, and grew up in Milan. An Italian architect and designer of the late 20th century, he was a leading member of the Memphis Group, which revolutionized product design in the 1980s. Ettore Sottsass died on December 31, 2007. “When I was a Very Small Boy” (“Quando ero Piccolissimo”) was written in 1973 by Ettore Sottsass and published in Terrazzo, Number 5, Fall 1990. It is published here in a shortened form with the permission of Barbara Radice and Archivio Ettore Sottsass.

When I Was A Very Small Boy

When I was very small, a little boy of five or six years old, I was certainly no infant prodigy, but I did do drawings with houses, with vases and flowers, with gypsy caravans, merry-to-rounds and cemeteries (perhaps because the first world war had only just ended) and then, when I was a bit older, I built beautiful, sharp-pointed sailing-boats, carved with a penknife out of the tender bark of pine-trees from Mount Bondone and together with Giorgio and Paolo Graffer we constructed cableways that were even two hundred metres long, that ran from the houses on the river Adige up to the top of Doss Trent, since we had found some balls of paper string that had been abandoned in the cellar by retreating Austrians (or maybe stolen by grandfather Graffer), and later when I was even bigger, aged eight or nine, I made barometers and wooden telescopes in my uncle Max the carpenter’s workshop to measure the passing of the stars, but naturally neither the barometer nor the telescope ever worked despite the drawings I did, of an astronomy as I imagined it and so on. It has always seemed to me the most natural thing in the world to draw and make things.


I don’t think I have ever made any great difference between drawing a thing, making it and using it or even between making things by myself or with others. If I felt like making a boat, it was I who drew it, I who built it: and I was the captain in command of it on the Pacific Ocean, defending it from mortal atolli, bringing it alongside coral beaches; when we were together, if we felt like doing a cable-way, it was we who drew it, we who made it and we the “people” that used it. And even when we did things it didn’t occur to us to deliver models to anyone, we had absolutely no conceit, no sense of power derived from the knowledge of what we were perhaps capable of doing. I didn’t feel and we did not feel like designers, or artists, or engineers for an audience and still and still less in front of an audience: we did not look either for consumers, or for observers, nor did we look for agreement or disagreement or anything that wasn’t all inside ourselves. 

Everything we did was entirely absorbed in the act of doing it, in wanting to do it, and everything we did stayed ultimately inside a single extraordinary sphere of life. The design was life itself, it was the day from dawn till dusk, it was the waiting during the night, it was an awareness of the world around us, of materials and lights, distances and weights, resistance, fragilities, use and consumption, birth and death…

Now that I’m old they let me design electronic machines and other machines in iron, with flashing phosphorescent lights and sounds and no one knows whether they are cynical or ironical: now they only let me design furniture that ought to be sold, furniture they say, that is useful to society, they say, and other things that are sold “at low prices” they say, and in this way they can sell more of them, for society they say, and now I design things of this kind. Now they pay me to design them. Not much, but they pay me. Now they look for me and wait for models from me, as they say, ideas and solutions which end up heaven knows where.

Now everything seems to have changed. The things I do (by myself or with my companions) seem to have changed and the way they are done also seems to have changed because, goodbye bright blue Planet, goodbye melodious seasons, goodbye stones, dust, leaves, ponds, and dragon flies, goodbye boiling-hot days, dead dogs by the roadside, shadows in the wood like prehistoric dragons, goodbye Planet, by now I feel as if I do the things I do sitting in a bunker of damp artificial light and conditioned air, sitting at this white laminate table, sitting in this silver plastic chair, captain of a spaceship traveling at thousands of miles an hour, squashed against this seat — immobile in the sky. 

By now I have to think of things from an artificial space, with neither place nor time; a space only of words, phone-calls, meetings, timetables, politics, waiting, failures. By now I’m a professional acrobat, actor and tightrope walker, for an audience that I invent, that I describe to myself, a remote audience with whom I have no contact, stifled echoes of whose talking, clapping and disapproval reach me, whose wars, catastrophes, famines, suicides, escapes, poverty or anxious restings along crowded beaches or inside smoky stadiums I read about in papers; how can I know who are the ones expecting something from me?

I would like to break this strange mechanism I’ve been driven into. I would like to break it for myself and for others, for me and with others. I would like not to have to play the role of the artist only because this way I get paid, and I wish it wouldn’t even occur to others that there’s anyone who gets paid for being an artist. I would like all of us or none of us to be artists, as we were when we did drawings, boats, ships and windmills, cableways and telescopes. I would like to think that the old happy state that I once knew could somehow be brought back: that happy state in which “design” or art — so called art — was life, in which life was art, I mean creativity, I mean it was the awareness of belonging to the Planet and to the pulsing history of the people that are with us. 

I’d like to find somewhere to try out things, together, things to do with our hands or machines, in any way, not like boy scouts or even like craftsmen and not even like workers and still less like artists, but like men with arms, legs, hands, feet, hairs, sex, saliva, eyes and breath, and to do them, certainly not to possess things and to keep them for ourselves and not even to give them to others, but just feel what it’s like to do things by trying to do them, trying to find out whether everyone can do things, other things, with their hands or machines — or whatever — etcetera etcetera. Can it be tried?

My friends say it can. 

Perhaps best known for designing Olivetti’s iconic red plastic typewriter, Ettore Sottsass was born in Innsbruck, Austria, and grew up in Milan. An Italian architect and designer of the late 20th century, he was a leading member of the Memphis Group, which revolutionized product design in the 1980s. Ettore Sottsass died on December 31, 2007.
“When I was a Very Small Boy” (“Quando ero Piccolissimo”) was written in 1973 by Ettore Sottsass and published in Terrazzo, Number 5, Fall 1990. It is published here in a shortened form with the permission of Barbara Radice and Archivio Ettore Sottsass.
05/10/13
Source: m.designobserver.com
Conscious Capitalism: The Idea We’ve All Been Waiting For I just gave a speech about Conscious Capitalism to 400 marketing and media professionals.  If ever there was going to be a tough crowd, this was it. But, to my great delight, it went over really well. Really, really well. Why wouldn’t it? People in marketing, media and adland are every bit as human as people on the rest of the planet and just as desperate to see a breakthrough from the drudgery, selfishness and short-sightedness of business as usual. This is what I spoke about in a nutshell. Forget the wheel, the scriptures, the printing press, the lightbulb, the telephone, the microchip and the internet, the best idea we’ve ever had is capitalism.  It’s been the most successful operating system for creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship ever. In the last 200 years capitalism has elevated humanity from the clutches of poverty, crude agrarian living, illiteracy and widespread violence. It’s also helped to multiply life expectancy more than twofold to a global average of 68.  It’s worked wonders. But lately it’s been hijacked by greed and sold short by economists with little imagination and a narrow and pessimistic view of the human spirit.  People have become jaded, exhausted and overwhelmed.  And so capitalism has hit the wall. Enter Conscious Capitalism.  A new way to do business that is proving more successful, more sustainable and far more creative. Conscious businesses outperform their peers on every measure, including profitability. And here’s why. First, conscious businesses understand human creativity and the desire for meaningful work. Second, they understand the interdependence of stakeholders. In a world of hyper-connectivity and transparency, increasing intelligence (the Flynn Effect), with middle-age values on the ascendancy and a growing awareness that actions have consequences, consciousness in business will become the new normal. If capitalism was a great idea for much of the last 200 years, conscious capitalism is a better one for now.

Conscious Capitalism: The Idea We’ve All Been Waiting For

I just gave a speech about Conscious Capitalism to 400 marketing and media professionals.  If ever there was going to be a tough crowd, this was it.

But, to my great delight, it went over really well. Really, really well.

Why wouldn’t it? People in marketing, media and adland are every bit as human as people on the rest of the planet and just as desperate to see a breakthrough from the drudgery, selfishness and short-sightedness of business as usual.

This is what I spoke about in a nutshell.

Forget the wheel, the scriptures, the printing press, the lightbulb, the telephone, the microchip and the internet, the best idea we’ve ever had is capitalism.  It’s been the most successful operating system for creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship ever.

In the last 200 years capitalism has elevated humanity from the clutches of poverty, crude agrarian living, illiteracy and widespread violence. It’s also helped to multiply life expectancy more than twofold to a global average of 68.  It’s worked wonders.

But lately it’s been hijacked by greed and sold short by economists with little imagination and a narrow and pessimistic view of the human spirit.  People have become jaded, exhausted and overwhelmed.  And so capitalism has hit the wall.

Enter Conscious Capitalism.  A new way to do business that is proving more successful, more sustainable and far more creative. Conscious businesses outperform their peers on every measure, including profitability.

And here’s why. First, conscious businesses understand human creativity and the desire for meaningful work. Second, they understand the interdependence of stakeholders.

In a world of hyper-connectivity and transparency, increasing intelligence (the Flynn Effect), with middle-age values on the ascendancy and a growing awareness that actions have consequences, consciousness in business will become the new normal.

If capitalism was a great idea for much of the last 200 years, conscious capitalism is a better one for now.

05/8/13
Source: craigdavisnow.com
Goodby Silverstein & Partners’ 30 For 30 GS&P celebrates its 30th anniversary on April 15, 2013. To mark this milestone, we reached out to a group of distinguished GSP alumni—creatives, strategists, media planners, producers, account leaders and others—and asked them to vote for their 10 favorite things produced at GSP in our first 30 years. Click through the image above to enjoy the trip down memory lane.

Goodby Silverstein & Partners’ 30 For 30

GS&P celebrates its 30th anniversary on April 15, 2013.

To mark this milestone, we reached out to a group of distinguished GSP alumni—creatives, strategists, media planners, producers, account leaders and others—and asked them to vote for their 10 favorite things produced at GSP in our first 30 years.

Click through the image above to enjoy the trip down memory lane.

05/8/13
Source: goodbysilverstein.com
The Most Awesome Craiglist Ad Is For A Beat-Up Bike Profanity-laced hyperbolic Craigslist ads were once novel, but now they are a genre to themselves. To get people’s attention on the site these days you have to do something really remarkable. That’s why we salute this ad for a used bicycle from Ryan Kutscher, an advertising copywriter. Where to start? There’s the opener: “Grab a paper bag, breathe into it and calm your ass down. You’re hyperventilating because you ain’t never seen a deal like this before…” This leads into some fantastic claims: “It looks like Iron Man if Iron Man were a bike.” “Let’s talk about that three speed in-the-hub, fixed-gear transmission for a second. It’s as gnarly as it is exotic. Like the tropical, saw-toothed platypus. Which is a species that does’t even exist. Fortunately this crazy ass hub does.” To really appreciate the ad, you have to read it in full by clicking through the “Iron Man” image above.

The Most Awesome Craiglist Ad Is For A Beat-Up Bike

Profanity-laced hyperbolic Craigslist ads were once novel, but now they are a genre to themselves. To get people’s attention on the site these days you have to do something really remarkable.

That’s why we salute this ad for a used bicycle from Ryan Kutscher, an advertising copywriter. Where to start? There’s the opener: “Grab a paper bag, breathe into it and calm your ass down. You’re hyperventilating because you ain’t never seen a deal like this before…” This leads into some fantastic claims: “It looks like Iron Man if Iron Man were a bike.” “Let’s talk about that three speed in-the-hub, fixed-gear transmission for a second. It’s as gnarly as it is exotic. Like the tropical, saw-toothed platypus. Which is a species that does’t even exist. Fortunately this crazy ass hub does.”

To really appreciate the ad, you have to read it in full by clicking through the “Iron Man” image above.

05/7/13
Source: Mashable
Companies: What Is Your Unique Contribution To A Sustainable Future? One of my earliest memories is of the moon landing in 1969. Then, as now, you could make a case for it as representing one of the most impressive feats of collective human endeavour. Putting a man on the moon within a decade was a goal, set by President John F Kennedy, in 1961. When that goal was announced, no one knew how it was going to be achieved. It was a huge, visible target, literally hanging in the sky. What Is Your Moon Boot? Today, mankind faces a target of even greater complexity, dwarfing the moon landing in scale and significance. By 2050, there will be nine billion people living on earth. That’s nearly 30% more people in the next 37 years to feed and water, to clothe and to live together with what we hope will be a high degree of life satisfaction. At the same time, we know that we would need three planets’ worth of resources for the world’s population to live the lifestyle that those (above the poverty line) in the UK currently enjoy. Our new moon landing is this: how do we provide high quality lifestyles for the future world population of nine billion, using the resources available to us? It’s almost too big a challenge to process, let alone solve. How can we ask businesses to help to deliver this future? Where do we even ask them to start? Sustainability is not about sacrificing quality of life, it’s about changing how we supply quality lives. It took a huge, multi-skilled team of 170,000 people nine years to land two men on the moon, each focusing on a key aspect of the project. Within that large group, a team of 300 people made the moon boots. Without the moon boots, there would have been no moon landing. I use this analogy to characterise the role that we, at Business in the Community, are asking businesses to play. What is the significant, unique contribution their products and services can make to the overall goal of nine billion quality lifestyles by 2050? What is their moon boot? From Business Case To Business Model We have 37 years to unlock talent, think about new ways of working, test new business models and deliver solutions. There’s a lot of room for making existing supply chains more efficient, but we will get much further towards our goal by completely redesigning the product or delivering the service in a different way. We need to move more quickly. Businesses always ask us: what is the business case for the change you’re asking us to make? There is an obvious business case for certain actions – more energy-efficient lighting saves money, for example. There is a less demonstrable business case for other asks, such as changing your business model to encourage people to buy less. B&Q has set up Street Club which suggests people share lawn mowers and drills with their neighbours, rather than each person purchasing their own. Consideration of the short-term business case involves focusing on short-term results. This has value, but it won’t take us where we need to be. For businesses to drive real, long-term transformational change, they need to move beyond looking at the business case – they need to look at their business models. This process must begin in the boardroom. At Business in the Community, we are in the early stages of working with our member companies on developing a new agenda for the boardroom – identifying key points for discussion at senior level that will help to embed consideration of sustainability deeply into an organisation. Board members have a crucial role in examining and addressing sustainability challenges for their business in a changing world. They should regularly discuss issues such as the opportunities and risks posed to their company by rapid population growth, increasing resource constraints and shifts in consumer values. They should also be discussing the legacy of the business, its contribution to society beyond financial returns for shareholders. Finding the right balance between decisions that serve the short-term needs of the business and those addressing much longer-term needs is key. And the customer should also be considered; board members should identify the specific asks they have of their customers to help their company to deliver more sustainable products or services. There are great examples of companies which are testing new and potentially more sustainable business models. Marks & Spencer is aiming to change the business model for the clothing retail sector through its “shwopping” programme, encouraging customers to donate old clothes to Oxfam using in-store boxes before they buy new clothes. This initiative began after board members decided to do more than just deliver short-term financial results. Instead, they wanted to test new approaches to address the global trends affecting their business that stretch from now to 2050. However, transformational change doesn’t end in the boardroom, or even the single company; it should extend along supply chains and right into the customer’s sitting room. Businesses cannot deliver a sustainable future by themselves, any more than governments can. They need citizens to play their part – and sometimes that might mean recognising that their current behaviour and lifestyles can be changed to create a better life for themselves and help increase the chances for others to enjoy a better life. Collaborative Sustainability Through our Be the Start campaign, every day during May a different company or organisation will communicate what they are doing to make it easier for UK citizens, through the products or services they offer, to make a positive contribution to sustainability. There is no single version of a sustainable lifestyle, but collectively the impact can be huge. This Responsible Business Week, Business in the Community will engage with 850 member companies, aiming to create a different narrative for corporate sustainability and sustainable development. We want each organisation to test new business models shaped not just by short-term economics and customers’ trends but by long-term environmental and social trends. We are asking for bolder, longer term thinking in boardrooms, more courageous tests of new business models and, when they prove successful, the delivery of that business model across that company’s entire reach – from their boardroom, across the business, up and down the supply chain and finally to all the consumers their products or services touch. And that will be their moon boot. Alan Knight is marketplace sustainability director for Business in the Community. This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Become a GSB member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox.

Companies: What Is Your Unique Contribution To A Sustainable Future?

One of my earliest memories is of the moon landing in 1969. Then, as now, you could make a case for it as representing one of the most impressive feats of collective human endeavour. Putting a man on the moon within a decade was a goal, set by President John F Kennedy, in 1961. When that goal was announced, no one knew how it was going to be achieved. It was a huge, visible target, literally hanging in the sky.

What Is Your Moon Boot?

Today, mankind faces a target of even greater complexity, dwarfing the moon landing in scale and significance. By 2050, there will be nine billion people living on earth. That’s nearly 30% more people in the next 37 years to feed and water, to clothe and to live together with what we hope will be a high degree of life satisfaction. At the same time, we know that we would need three planets’ worth of resources for the world’s population to live the lifestyle that those (above the poverty line) in the UK currently enjoy.

Our new moon landing is this: how do we provide high quality lifestyles for the future world population of nine billion, using the resources available to us? It’s almost too big a challenge to process, let alone solve. How can we ask businesses to help to deliver this future? Where do we even ask them to start? Sustainability is not about sacrificing quality of life, it’s about changing how we supply quality lives.

It took a huge, multi-skilled team of 170,000 people nine years to land two men on the moon, each focusing on a key aspect of the project. Within that large group, a team of 300 people made the moon boots. Without the moon boots, there would have been no moon landing. I use this analogy to characterise the role that we, at Business in the Community, are asking businesses to play. What is the significant, unique contribution their products and services can make to the overall goal of nine billion quality lifestyles by 2050? What is their moon boot?

From Business Case To Business Model

We have 37 years to unlock talent, think about new ways of working, test new business models and deliver solutions. There’s a lot of room for making existing supply chains more efficient, but we will get much further towards our goal by completely redesigning the product or delivering the service in a different way.

We need to move more quickly. Businesses always ask us: what is the business case for the change you’re asking us to make? There is an obvious business case for certain actions – more energy-efficient lighting saves money, for example. There is a less demonstrable business case for other asks, such as changing your business model to encourage people to buy less. B&Q has set up Street Club which suggests people share lawn mowers and drills with their neighbours, rather than each person purchasing their own.

Consideration of the short-term business case involves focusing on short-term results. This has value, but it won’t take us where we need to be. For businesses to drive real, long-term transformational change, they need to move beyond looking at the business case – they need to look at their business models.

This process must begin in the boardroom. At Business in the Community, we are in the early stages of working with our member companies on developing a new agenda for the boardroom – identifying key points for discussion at senior level that will help to embed consideration of sustainability deeply into an organisation.

Board members have a crucial role in examining and addressing sustainability challenges for their business in a changing world. They should regularly discuss issues such as the opportunities and risks posed to their company by rapid population growth, increasing resource constraints and shifts in consumer values.

They should also be discussing the legacy of the business, its contribution to society beyond financial returns for shareholders. Finding the right balance between decisions that serve the short-term needs of the business and those addressing much longer-term needs is key. And the customer should also be considered; board members should identify the specific asks they have of their customers to help their company to deliver more sustainable products or services.

There are great examples of companies which are testing new and potentially more sustainable business models. Marks & Spencer is aiming to change the business model for the clothing retail sector through its “shwopping” programme, encouraging customers to donate old clothes to Oxfam using in-store boxes before they buy new clothes. This initiative began after board members decided to do more than just deliver short-term financial results. Instead, they wanted to test new approaches to address the global trends affecting their business that stretch from now to 2050.

However, transformational change doesn’t end in the boardroom, or even the single company; it should extend along supply chains and right into the customer’s sitting room. Businesses cannot deliver a sustainable future by themselves, any more than governments can. They need citizens to play their part – and sometimes that might mean recognising that their current behaviour and lifestyles can be changed to create a better life for themselves and help increase the chances for others to enjoy a better life.

Collaborative Sustainability

Through our Be the Start campaign, every day during May a different company or organisation will communicate what they are doing to make it easier for UK citizens, through the products or services they offer, to make a positive contribution to sustainability. There is no single version of a sustainable lifestyle, but collectively the impact can be huge.

This Responsible Business Week, Business in the Community will engage with 850 member companies, aiming to create a different narrative for corporate sustainability and sustainable development. We want each organisation to test new business models shaped not just by short-term economics and customers’ trends but by long-term environmental and social trends. We are asking for bolder, longer term thinking in boardrooms, more courageous tests of new business models and, when they prove successful, the delivery of that business model across that company’s entire reach – from their boardroom, across the business, up and down the supply chain and finally to all the consumers their products or services touch. And that will be their moon boot.

Alan Knight is marketplace sustainability director for Business in the Community.

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05/7/13
Source: Guardian
The Consequences Of Embracing Froth What if we worked on the assumption… That what we produce does not lead to profound satisfaction in people’s lives? That what we produce really does not satisfy people’s deepest, most enduring, most keenly-felt needs? That what we make really is not that important to people? Perhaps… We’d start making more work that didn’t always take itself so seriously. We’d stop with the nonsense of creating social / cultural movements. The measure of our success would not be the degree to which we change people’s lives, but the degree to which what we make is interesting. We’d stop worrying so much if people thought our work was ‘believable’, and focused on making stuff that was plausible. Our starting point would more often be what people find interesting, rather than our contribution to Life. There would be more space for a sense of irony and playfulness that feels in such short supply in adland’s output. We’d start having a more authentic ‘conversation’ (if we really must call it that) with people. And perhaps we might actually meet the consumer, sorry, people, on common ground.

The Consequences Of Embracing Froth

What if we worked on the assumption…

That what we produce does not lead to profound satisfaction in people’s lives?

That what we produce really does not satisfy people’s deepest, most enduring, most keenly-felt needs?

That what we make really is not that important to people?

Perhaps…

We’d start making more work that didn’t always take itself so seriously.

We’d stop with the nonsense of creating social / cultural movements.

The measure of our success would not be the degree to which we change people’s lives, but the degree to which what we make is interesting.

We’d stop worrying so much if people thought our work was ‘believable’, and focused on making stuff that was plausible.

Our starting point would more often be what people find interesting, rather than our contribution to Life.

There would be more space for a sense of irony and playfulness that feels in such short supply in adland’s output.

We’d start having a more authentic ‘conversation’ (if we really must call it that) with people.

And perhaps we might actually meet the consumer, sorry, people, on common ground.

05/7/13
Source: martinweigel.org
Disruptive Technologies Impacting Economies, Business Models & People In the first of a series of video interviews, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt explores the technologies likely to have the greatest disruptive impact on economies, business models, and people. Later this month the McKinsey Global Institute will publish an assessment of the probable economic impact of disruptive technologies. Click through the image above to watch the video.

Disruptive Technologies Impacting Economies, Business Models & People

In the first of a series of video interviews, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt explores the technologies likely to have the greatest disruptive impact on economies, business models, and people. Later this month the McKinsey Global Institute will publish an assessment of the probable economic impact of disruptive technologies.

Click through the image above to watch the video.

05/5/13
Source: mckinsey.com

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