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What We Owe The Future
As business leaders, we often get stuck in the operational issues of the short term. Once a year, when we go into the strategy review process, we may look three to five or even ten years into the future. Most of us, however, never apply perspectives beyond that. Something that I believe hinders us in building Better Business and a better future.
Maybe that's why I am so fascinated by the book What We Owe The Future by William McAskill. He is a young Scottish philosopher and author and an Associ…
The green industrial revolution is already here
The world around us is often described as increasingly volatile, complex and ambiguous. We see signs of accelerating change and exponential growth in a number of different areas, such as the increasing speed of technical development and digitalization. Some claim that we even walk faster in cities today than what we did a few decades back.
Perhaps it is not so strange that eighty per cent of all companies already run some type of change projects. Not seldom several change projects are running i…
Check out what the new AI-bot ChatGPT says about sustainable business and greenwashing
Accelerating Better Business and a Better Future
It seems like the whole world is now abruptly waking-up to increasing economic and political uncertainty, as well as to accelerating climate change and biodiversity loss. Several of the global risks earlier identified by the World Economic Forumare playing out. Including the fact that the world has already crossed several planetary boundaries and is on a pathway far above the 1.5°C target to mitigate climate change. We are now even reaching a point where the well-being of humanity and our planet…
Are you stuck in a paradigm paralysis?
"All truth passes through three stages.
First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as self-evident."
-Arthur Schopenhauer
Change and disruption may seem to be new characteristics related to our modern world but are in fact not new phenomenon. They have been with us since the beginning of time, and some patterns seem to be repeated continuously.
Following her studies of change throughout human history, Connie Gersick described what…
What does opportunity mean to you?
Unleashing the potential of Better Business to address the wicked problems of the world provides vast opportunities - ultimately to build a better future. But what does opportunity mean to you? As inspiration, I've have selected some inspirational quotes from different eras and parts of the world to help get your mind on the journey.
“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”
(Albert Einstein)
"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds."
(Francis Bacon)
"Each …
Better Business is a key milestone
"Like the digital revolution before it, the sustainability revolution promises to change everything. Yet, just as with digital, many companies are moving too slowly, taking an incremental approach to a challenge that demands a radical rethink."
-World Economic Forum
The Sustainability Revolution is here, and today's sustainability trailblazers are leading the way. Better Business is a first and urgent milestone. Better Business is however not to be considered an end-destination in itself, …
Moving towards regenerative business models
In 1970, economist Milton Friedman wrote a New York Times article titled “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.” In the article, Friedman argued that business leaders have no other responsibility than to increase the profits of the firm, and that anything other than a pure focus on profits is to be considered theft from shareholders, and socialism. This 51-year-old article has been attributed to the origin of the short-sighted shareholder capitalism that we have seen …
The consequences of the great acceleration
Over the past century, the world has seen unprecedented economic development and an exponentially growing population. Industrialization and globalization have led to wealth and prosperity; they have increased our lifespan by decades and brought billions out of poverty across the globe.
The exponentially growing GDP has simply created a brand new world over the last century. When my own grandmother was born in 1908, most Swedish households still had no electricity and none had the modern appli…
Sustainability concerns us all
Sustainability can be defined as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. At least as to the UN Bruntland Commission report ‘Our Common Future’ in 1987. By executive management teams and boards, sustainability has long been considered something outside of the core business. But times are changing.
Sustainability is no longer something for conscious consumers and brands in some of the most developed countries …