ASHRAE

Sharing promotes sustainable consumerism

How the wisdom of the crowd can reshape free enterprise
Monday, July 8, 2013
By Barbara Carss

The wisdom of crowds is pointing capitalism in a new direction, according to Doug Miller, chairman and CEO of the research consultancy company, GlobeScan, whose hypothesis is supported with data drawn from surveys conducted on behalf of some of the world’s most influential private sector players and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

“It was three years ago that Chinese respondents overtook Americans in their belief in the free enterprise system,” Miller told attendees at a recent Insights Exchange, sponsored by the non-profit RSI/Rethink Sustainability. “Only 11 per cent globally think that free enterprise is fine just as it is; 25 per cent are willing to take flight. Half want it reformed and regulated more heavily.”

The afternoon’s proceedings included interactive group discussions to explore the role of collaboration in business, and environmental and societal sustainability. But to begin, Miller’s keynote address outlined the rationale for, and some of the challenges of, finding new ways to approach complex problems.

Environmental threats are intensifying at a time when growing wealth in many of the world’s developing economies is enabling new, potentially voracious consumers. Meanwhile, trust in traditional markets and business models is declining as survey respondents perceive that few lessons have been learned from the 2008 economic collapse.

“Nothing has happened. The system is actually more fragile today than it was in 2008,” said Miller. “There are even more ‘too big to fails’.”

Alternatively, he suggested that collaboration might be a cornerstone of the new corporate entity known as the ‘benefit corporation’, which has a self-imposed mandate to strive for a net positive impact on society and environment. This requires scrutiny and management of productive output and decision-making processes, and publicly reporting efforts and results.

Collaboration allows for sharing of resources, expertise and risk, and, Miller argued, is simply practical for entrepreneurs.

“When you’re working on a little line of credit backed with $30,000 from your mother, you have to leverage everything,” he said. “It is a way of leveraging sweat equity and good personal relationships into things that money can’t buy.”

Turning to the items that buyers want, he sees opportunities to nurture a shared economy, particularly among a burgeoning market segment dubbed the “aspirationalists,” through common ownership of capital-intensive (and/or carbon-intensive) sporadically used items such as automobiles, machinery, tools and appliances. Surveys and stakeholder engagement offer resources to identify what consumers want, make them aware of more sustainable ways to get it and guide the process.

“It could be a large part of the answer of getting to a sustainable world,” said Miller. “If we word the questionnaire neutrally and do scientific sampling, we can create the conditions where people can show their wisdom.”

A survey of the attendees yielded a list of attributes that can contribute to successful collaboration: willingness to listen; patience; stepping away from hierarchical decision-making and organizational egos; and recognizing the process to a collaborative outcome arises from hard work, not necessarily ingrained harmony among participants.

Collaboration might be seen as almost inherently in line with the interests of an organization like RSI, which defines its agenda as an “action-focused journey” of “like-minded visionaries, practitioners and leaders.” Yet, plenty of hands were raised when Miller asked who had experience with a difficult or unsuccessful collaboration. As with conventional business practices, efforts to collaborate can often break down.

“It requires – probably what an entrepreneur needs – willingness to fail,” he advised. “We have to embrace that failure is one of the scenarios but, in the process, there is some learning going on that can be applied next time.”

While the wisdom of crowds informs the big picture, specialists in the academic, business, government and NGO sectors focus on the hands-on details of supporting new problem solving approaches. For example, the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership has a 25-year track record in bringing together organizational leaders.

“They train people on how to be partners; on how to play nice,” said Miller.

Ultimately, this serves business interests in retooling an economic model that has engendered widespread and increasing discontent. Miller acknowledged a general level of trepidation about approaching CFOs with perceived costly corporate social responsibility (CSR) measures, then weighed that against the potential repercussions of head-in-the-sand status quo.

“CSR is going to be replaced with something your CFO is going to like even less,” he cautioned.

Barbara Carss is editor-in-chief of Building Strategies & Sustainability and Canadian Property Management magazines.

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