Disruptive Innovation To Save The World

Today is Blog Action Day, a global network event in which bloggers from more than 100 countries are writing about climate change through whatever lens makes sense to them. Perhaps unsurprisingly, my post relates to innovation. I believe we need nothing less than a radical shift in sentiment and a radical shift in our perception of the responsibilities and opportunities of business to put our planet back on the right track.

Climate change was chosen as the theme for this Blog Action Day for the simple reason that it is an issue that threatens all of us, and an issue which we are all responsible for contributing to solving. Philanthropic organizations and relief groups can help mitigate some of the deleterious impact of climate change we're already experiencing in the form of famine, drought, and natural disaster. Governments can and must take action for setting bounds in the way we consume the earth's limited resources. They need to act multilaterally to take more dramatic steps than they are used to, in the process figuring out how to reduce emissions while not unfairly punishing developing nations. It's heartening to see UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown participating in Blog Action Day.

The future prosperity of our earth requires a major shift in sentiment. Individuals in Western nations have grown use to the idea of growth and that more is always better. Consumption has become easy, fast, customizable, and ultimately unsustainable. In the process, we've come to connect having with meaning.

However there is a major opening for a shift in understanding. More and more, we are questioning the 20th century's version of success. I believe that my generation in particular has a gnawing gut sense that high salaries don't always (or even usually) correlate to fulfillment. I think we need to capture this opportunity to change the conversation about meaning entirely, and in this, I think faith organizations have a particularly important role to play in helping people move away from raw, unending consumption.

I think, however, that entrepreneurs and the business sector have both a particular opportunity and a particular responsibility. The responsibility comes from the simple fact that climate change is inextricably linked to the 200 years of an industrial age which achieved ever greater economies of scale, ever lower prices, ever more disposable products, at an ever greater cost to the earth. When the environment moved off the bottom of the balance sheet and became an "externality" - a cost that someone else would have to pay - it set the clock ticking on a debt that would one day have to be paid.

That debt has come due. Society can no longer reasonably bear the cost for the mode of production. I hate the phrase "saving the world," but those are really the stakes. Something has to give. And when the choices are our way of doing business or the earth itself, I'll take our way of doing business. Therein lies the opportunity.

There are many businesses that are taking steps to reduce their environmental footprint. There are some, like Better World Books, finding creative ways to reuse resources. There are even some, like Walmart, that are taking extremely proactive steps to shift the way their products are made. These are immensely powerful. Taken as a network effect, they can increasingly make it the norm, rather than the exception, that the things we consume are made at with high environmental efficiency.

But there are some businesses that are trying to fundamentally shift industries that are destroying the planet. Companies like 1Block Off the Grid are trying to align the incentives to make it easy to harness solar power. Companies like Better Place are trying to entirely up end fossil fuels as the energy for our transportation.

Some entrepreneurs succeed because of their unique, patentable technology. Some entrepreneurs succeed because they have a gift for aligning incentives between nontraditional partners to create new opportunities. Some entrepreneurs succeed largely because they're in the right place at the right time and the world is clamoring for what they have to offer.

Right now, it's going to take all three of those types of entrepreneurialism to succeed. And unlike traditional business, this risk is not held by the owners of the company, but by everyone. The whole world are shareholders and the stakes couldn't be hire.

Entrepreneurs, now is not the time for thinking little. There are a million historical quotes that would be appropriate here - from Chicago planner Daniel Burnham's "Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood," to Lincoln's "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate for the stormy present," - the point is largely the same: go big or go home. Let's get to it.

(Photo: Jasmic)