Green and Impact: Currencies of the 21st Century
(We are swiftly entering a world-order where going green and thinking about the impact of your innovations are not choices.)
Prologue: Going green or creating impacts are not new trends. Green parties have been out there since the 1970s! Even in recent years, a lot has been in the international media in terms of climatic action: be it Greta’s revolution or the recent protests in the UK. We shall not discuss them in the current essay. In the current essay, it will be argued that activists and politicians have been doing their job (more or less).
The onus is, now, on us, innovators and entrepreneurs, to make the reality of the dreams.
Some interesting information, questions and trends. We all must have come across terms like Fourth Industrial Revolution, Industry 4.0 etc. in various articles, blogs and talks. Seldom does one listen to a more holistic discussion around it. Industry 4.0 is expected to happen thanks to AI. But what are we expecting to happen? Let us look at the previous industrial revolutions which happened over the past 200 years or so. Prof. McCloskey elegantly calls this the period of great enrichment when the average salary of common men in Western Europe increased by 10 to 33 times (that’s 1000%-3300% growth)! The biggest question is can the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) create the same amount of wealth? Will it (or can it) recreate the same miracle in the Global South?
What else can be created by 4IR? Job losses! Yes, you might have gone through some studies claiming that 4IR shall not create unemployment. Try to read between the lines in those reports and you shall spot the way they try to use statistics to lie! (Here is a nice booklet for those who may want to learn the tricks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Lie_with_Statistics!) A report from the World Economic Forums (WEF) puts things in perspective. People will lose jobs “unless” they are reskilled. This has happened all the time in the past. Why shall this not happen now? The answer lies in something that Fuller worked on a few decades back. Fuller’s knowledge doubling trend suggested that knowledge is increasing at an exponential rate. Exponential growth is something that humans are not designed to comprehend.
So, when knowledge is doubling every year, it is virtually impossible to reskill all those who lose their jobs. How do we solve this?
Next phenomena is that of climate change and environmental poisoning. This shall push a massive number of people into poverty. This has been and shall keep on causing a massive number of non-communicable diseases. How do we tackle this?
The net effect of the above phenomena is twofold. We shall have less buying potential in the market and there shall be fewer resources to exploit. Business shall not be as usual!
What can be done? We have discussed a few difficult questions in our analysis so far. It is easy to discuss problems. Let us discuss solutions!
In her analysis, Prof. McCloskey elaborated how innovators had a major role to play in creating the enrichment-miracle over the past 200 years. In answering the above questions the greatest role shall be played (again) by innovators and entrepreneurs.
Of course, policymakers have an equally important role to play. Thanks to the knowledge doubling phenomena, they shall not, unfortunately, have the luxury of time. Some governments are working in an aggressive manner to 1) assimilate as much of this knowledge as possible and 2) formulate bold new policies at a record level of agility. For example, the Finnish government aggressively commissions studies on emerging issues and technologies and publishes them in an easy-to-navigate webpage. Similarly, the European Union showed unprecedented agility when it adopted the EU Plastic Strategy in a record time of just six months.
Lastly, amidst the current economic uncertainties (caused by Covid19) the EU has retained the green core of its budget where a mammoth five hundred and fifty billion Euros (550bn EUR) shall be spent in green projects over the next seven years.
As innovators, we need to make two fundamental changes in our thought process and modus-operandi. Remember, how we discussed that it is no more business as usual. We need to adapt and be agile.
The first thing we need to do is to add the phrase “green” in as many of our dealings as possible. We need to make it a part of our dreams and discussions. We can actively work on green-technologies or at least actively avoid working with non-green technologies and partners.
The next change we need to work on is replacing the word profit with prosperity. We need to think of the “impacts” we create in all the spheres of our life and our planet. Can we try to be mindful of the prosperity we create for everyone? Let us not forget that this does not count as being philanthropic anymore. We are not helping “others”. We are only helping ourselves and maybe our future selves. However, the word “future” is also losing its conventional meaning. When knowledge gets double every 12 months, changes start appearing at a much faster rate. Long-term future no longer means something that will happen in 50–100 years. Long-term future shall soon mean the happenings of next 1–2 years! Hence, let us discuss in terms of impact. Let impact-musings be part of daily Scrum-meetings, board meetings and elevator pitches.
Epilogue: Lord Cutler Beckett, in Pirates of the Caribbean, smugly told, “ I’m afraid currency is the currency of the realm.” I think we can safely assume that we are definitely not living in the era of pirates. We do need to change the currencies of the realm. Let green and impact be the new currencies of the realm, lest there is no realm left to run our currencies in! Let the next century be the century of great prosperity (as opposed to mere enrichment).
