Karma Capitalism
Editor's note: We're pleased to welcome Hemal Vasavada Gill to the writing team. Hemal is founder and editor-in-chief at The Eightfold, and also works as a freelance trend and marketing strategist. We've invited her on board to take a look at how companies are positioning themselves as green and sustainable, and to help you separate the hype from the real deal.
So you’ve changed your light bulbs, recycle, started buying local organic produce and are considering a hybrid. Now what? There are a million different other things you can be doing to reduce your carbon footprint, but how do you know your efforts are enough? How do you know this push to be green isn’t a phase?
Trend experts believe we are at the inception of a completely new economic system. Dubbed Karma Capitalism, this system ties economic progress to social and environmental progress so “doing good” is not just about looking green or sounding green or even acting green. It’s about companies living and breathing sustainability and working with every day people to make progress possible.
The theory is nice, but what does it look like? To answer this question, I flew to the day-long Trend Buero Karma Capitalism Trend Day in Germany last week to cover what leading Trend thinkers in Europe were saying for my blog: theeightfold.com. Here's a bit of what I learned to help you understand how you can shape the future of sustainability.
People are Key – We Have the Potential to Shape Progress
Karma Capitalism begins with the belief that we as humans are not only creative but also filled with limitless potential. In the current system, all the philanthropy and aid in the world hasn’t been able to solve problems of poverty, disease or global warming. Karma Capitalism involves businesses working with us as consumers and NGOs to design market solutions that will empower those in need.
This is possible because each one of us has the capacity to care and the potential to make a difference. We also have tools today to meet other like-minded people, create our own products and content and market our own ideas through digital media. But will we want to do this?
Trend experts believe we are at a critical turning point. We are tired of being treated like just consumers. Although economic figures like GDP continue to go up, our level of happiness has gone down. As we wake up to a world with increasing economic polarization, terrorism and natural disasters, we are looking for meaning, we are looking for hope, and we are looking for change. People are already doing this.
Take Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Prize Laureate and founder of the Grameen bank. Yunus created a system of micro lending in the seventies and eighties. He challenged the traditional institutions of lending by providing affordable loans to Bangladesh’s poorest, even if they didn’t have collateral. Today he’s helped lift millions of people around the world out of poverty and is starting to work with major businesses like Nestle to create a new system of social businesses.
Companies Need Us to Develop Creative Solutions
The amazing thing about Yunus is that he started as an economics professor with a simple idea. He wasn’t necessarily special; he just started asking the right questions and little by little experimenting with solutions. Even more assuring is that today we have an additional advantage that Yunus didn’t have. Companies are getting involved. While traditional banks scoffed at Yunus, pioneering companies are looking for visionary people willing to experiment.
This might seem odd, but it’s because being sustainable and being “good” is incredibly difficult. Companies know something has been done, but they don’t have the traditional benchmarks, guides or even regulations to necessarily get them there. Like Yunus, they are learning by doing, but they are also learning they can’t change the system alone.
At the same time, companies learned from sites like YouTube and MySpace that they are no longer setting our social and cultural agenda. People have reclaimed their values and are determining what’s important in the world. Smart companies not only see this but also are learning. P&G for example has a consumer-lead innovation network called Vocalpoint, which moves outside of traditional focus group settings to engage real women to deliver better solutions for their lives. Why can’t it apply this strategy to doing good?
In a Karma Capitalist system, it will. The result will be a revolution in the way we consume products and the way we see the world. No longer will we simply buy products for products sake. The things we consume will have purpose – they will be “products as substance”. It could be as simple as being locally grown or as profound as Product Red has tried to do in helping solve the AIDs crisis in Africa.
Change is Real, Change is Here
The key to this future is in being active today. We need to continue using our creativity and potential to not only demand transparency and accountability from the brands we consume. We also need to start asking questions and sharing creative solutions with earnest companies who are trying to make a difference. While at one point this might have been seen as radical, today experts believe it is an expected reality. Why not then take the opportunity to help engineer a better economy and ecology through Karma Capitalism?
Links:
Trendbuero — Trendtag (in German)