Hope Beneath Our Feet_ Restoring Our Place in the Natural World - Martin Keogh [49]
Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen, authors of The Urban Homestead, have become increasingly interested in the concept of urban sustainability since moving to Los Angeles in 1998. In the that time, they’ve slowly converted their 1920 hilltop bungalow into a mini-farm, and along the way have explored the traditional home arts of baking, pickling, bicycling, and brewing, chronicling all their activities on their blog, Homegrown Evolution: www.homegrownevolution.com.
To Build a Better Future, Start with a Better Question
JEFFREY HOLLENDER
Anyone who contemplates the role of business in society must be capable of simultaneously holding two opposing truths in mind: business is responsible for much of what ails and abets the modern world.
Over the past half century, the astounding rise of the multinational corporation has made business the most powerful force in today’s society, surpassing even governments. Just recall FEMA’s feeble response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina—Walmart, with its world-class logistical operation and help from scores of nonprofits, proved to be the real first responder. Whether it’s Walmart providing disaster relief, Genzyme combating disease, Liberty Media holding sway over satellite communications technology, or ConAgra feeding vast swaths of the nation, business has generally proven itself to be the most efficient (though often not always the best) way to get things done.
Business is likewise skilled at creating and reinforcing our experience of life in the industrialized world. Apple designs the way we listen to music; Facebook helps shape our relationships; Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. increasingly frames the world’s events and thereby determines more of what we discuss.
But the business world’s sheer dominance over human affairs has created a host of unintended consequences, which include the rise of hunger, poverty, and inequality, as well as the depletion of natural resources, global climate change, and the extinction of countless species. While society’s ills live outside the balance sheets of the multinational corporations that contribute to these problems, that fact makes them (and us, as consumers of their products and services) no less culpable. So it’s more than ironic that the business world’s unrivaled power is the very thing that makes for-profit enterprise a critical force for creating a better future. We can’t “ease the world’s inequities,” as Bill Gates once put it, without re-defining the very purpose and possibility of business.
If we’re going to harness business to help us build a better future, we’ve got to learn to ask better questions. No matter what your field of endeavor, the question you ask shapes the answer you get. If you run a company, and you ask, “What can we do to build market share?” you will get a very different answer—and you will create a very different future—than if you ask, “What can we do to build a more sustainable economy?”
For too long, those of us in business have proved adept at posing the first kind of question, but all too inept at considering the second. Here’s a question that every business leader should ask, but too few do: “What does the world need most that we are uniquely able to provide?” The question embraces business’ vast potential to be a positive force for change. It’s a question that forces us to explore how we can develop the new thinking needed to respond to the vexing challenges (and boundless opportunities) that confront the planet.
Corporate responsibility and, more recently, corporate sustainability have been billed as the way forward for businesses committed to thinking beyond the next quarter and taking responsibility for all of their stakeholders. While this is a welcome development, it falls well short of what