Entrepreneurial Solutions to Insoluble Problems - Tides Canada

Growing Opportunity2360See Buried Treasure: Uncoveringthe Business Case for CorporateSustainability, SustainAbility and UNEP,2001; and Developing Value: The BusinessCase for Sustainability in EmergingMarkets, SustainAbility, the InternationalFinance Corporation (IFC) and InstitutoEthos, 2002. A ‘Developing Value 2’ projectis now under way.61For more, see the work of scenarioplanners Pierre Wack and Peter Schwartz.3 The Business CaseTo have any chance of changing theworld, entrepreneurial solutions mustoffer relatively high leverage, be able toreplicate and scale, and — fundamentally— become part of the market mainstream.Pretty much without exception,the social entrepreneurs we interviewedwere supportive of the idea of partnershipswith corporations. They were alsointerested to further develop thosepartnerships they already had, and todevelop more.But, why should business care?SustainAbility has covered the businesscase for corporate responsibility andsustainability elsewhere, 60 so what followsis a headlines-only brief.It’s time to think differentThe first reason that business needs toengage is that the world is changing — andwith it markets. Social and environmentalentrepreneurs do not have all the answers,but they do see the world and marketsdifferently, and the more innovative areexperimenting with new business modelsthat could potentially break out of theirniches and help transform key elementsof the global economy.There is a real risk that many businesspeople will chalk this up as anotherfluffy, feel-good fad. There is every reasonto be skeptical of any new movement oragenda, clearly, but our industry analyses(summarized in Chapters 4 and 5)uncovered a variety of ways that socialentrepreneurs are doing things differently,realizing exciting sustainability outcomesand offering innovative opportunities forbusiness.Just as software morphs through successivegenerations, 1.0, 2.0 and so on, weconclude that the time has come forwhat we call 3.0 thinking in relation tosustainability challenges. If 1.0 was drivenby regulators and promoted a compliancemindset in business, 2.0 has been moreabout corporate citizenship, based ontransparency, accountability and a growingarray of voluntary initiatives (Figure 3.1).By contrast, 3.0 thinking, strategy andventures is different in that it seekstransformative market and sustainabilityoutcomes. It is about creative destruction,as Joseph Schumpeter called it, and aboutcreative reconstruction.In essence, Mindset 3.0 is about seeing —‘reperceiving’ 61 — immense challenges,such as the growing risk of abrupt climatechange, as potential opportunities toleverage the power of markets and businessto reboot entire economic and politicalsystems. This is exactly what is beginningto happen in the energy field. In somecases the time-scales involved may begenerational, but the transformation isunder way. While the cleantech landscapeis now largely populated with pure-playprofit seekers, the industry was pioneeredby individuals who saw the opportunity toleverage market drivers — such as energysecurity, stability, and cost — to realizesignificant environmental outcomes.The situation is different in the developingcountry healthcare field, where pulling onmarket levers does not work in the sameway, largely due to weak end-markets.But the overwhelming unmet need forgood, well-funded, state-provided healthcaresystems has not prevented socialentrepreneurs from experimenting withcross-subsidized business models (richpatients’ fees covering the costs of thepoor, large companies’ assets and talentsbeing loaned for health outcomes).Though their efforts often expose the limitsof current market-based social enterpriseapproaches in areas like poverty, theyare spotlighting potential new markets,experimenting with new business modelsand modeling new leadership approaches.