Sustainable Entrepreneurship - Entrepreneural Sustainability, Entrepreneurship & Small Businesses Video Lecture | Entrepreneurship & Small Businesses - B Com

When one looks at the world, it seems
that every animal has its role to play.
Bees pollinate, elephants
restructure the Savannah,
beetles help decay dead stuff
and koalas, well, they eat and sleep.
But we humans seem to be the only
exception. If history is any guide,
our role or drive, seems to be deeply rooted
in acquiring knowledge, power and resources
- gold and people among other things. Human
intelligence has allowed us power over
nearly all ecosystems on earth, and throughout
history, competition has been the catalyst
for this progress. It is no different now in the
globalized business environment. Since the
dawn of industrialization, the environment
and our societies had always been sacrificed
to the gods of competition, cost-cutting and
consumerism. So many forests were burned
in the fires of industry to build our
cities and homes. So many beautiful hills
and mountains eroded for so-called 'precious'
metals without taking any precautionary
measure against floods and landslides
that could destroy lives and property
in nearby communities. We sacrificed
public good for corporate benefit.
This has been how businesses have
worked so far. But what is different
today from all of history is that the
world itself has never been at stake and
we cannot live the way we have if
we want to live the way we want.
Never before in history have corporations
wielded so much power and, as the old adage
goes - with great power,
comes great responsibility.
And it is precisely this 'responsibility'
that we have to remember - to Nature,
and to our fellow creatures with whom we
share the beautiful bounties of the world.
This is the core principle that necessitates
sustainability in entrepreneurship and business at large
But what is sustainable entrepreneurship?
Well, the clue lies in the word itself.
Sustain-ability - the ability to sustain.
In the context of entrepreneurship
it is the ability to sustain one's self, one's
community, one's society and the Earth.
It is as much about ensuring that
companies are run in a profitable and
transparent manner as it is about creating
bonds of trust among communities
in an inclusive and equitable way.
Trust, especially between the public
and the private sector, is the thread
that forms the garland of a diverse,
prosperous and equitable economy.
Sustainability is about entrepreneurs pursuing
a 'purpose-driven' business rather
than simply a profit-driven business.
A venture can only truly be called
sustainable when it creates profitable,
equitable, and inclusive value for its
target community, area or sector.
But of course, many will say that value
is always subjective. As my business
professors would say 'A thing's value is
whatever people are willing to pay for it.'
But as we have seen earlier, when we
orient our values on a price-driven model,
the environment and our society
pays the price. Rather, we should
focus on creating what Michael Porter
and Mark Kramer call 'shared value', which
is finding business opportunities in
social problems. This is a very different
approach from Corporate Social Responsibility,
which, in my opinion are simply PR initiatives
motivated more by legal obligation
than by true generosity. It is but a
symptom of our systemic lack of trust in
the private sector. But, creating shared value
rises above simply a social responsibility
or a legal obligation. It is about
creating value by searching for and
acting upon new opportunities and markets
that provide tremendous social benefit.
As Mohandas Gandhi once said,
'The best way to find yourself is to lose
yourself in the service of others.'
Companies and entrepreneurs should
realize that they are in a country that is
as chock full of social problems as there
are business opportunities, and pursue
shared value because not all profits are created
equal. Those that carry a social benefit are far better.
Of course, in our case, being a developing
country, we need to reinforce the structural,
bureaucratic and legal framework to allow
the common man and woman to create
sustainable value, to in turn create incisive
changes to the framework itself to make
it more inclusive, equitable and sustainable.
It is the interest of investors, governments
and citizens to strengthen and support
businesses and organizations that are
both profitable AND create a lot of shared
value, as opposed to one that is only profitable
Whether for-profit or non-profit, companies,
now, must aspire to be for-impact.
There is just that much more incentive when
profit itself isn't the end-goal but instead
becomes simply one metric of sustainability.
This is especially true for employees
and the customers who are far more
motivated by a shared mission rather than
being a means to an end. Profit is
important, but it is no longer sufficient.
This is why sustainability-oriented businesses
bring with it a redeeming difference.
To survive, they have to proactively
innovate not just new, but better,
more efficient and effective ways of
dealing with the same problems that
traditional businesses faced. When that
happens, the drive of competition is
channeled in a way that helps society and
the ecosystem. This same drive that can
and had destroyed our environment is
the same power that can rebuild it.
This is the beauty of
sustainable entrepreneurship.
Now, with a growing generation of aware
individuals who possess an eclectic
knowledge of the social and environmental
consequences of their actions, the skills to
benefit the lives of their community
members, their flora, fauna and the rest of
our biodiverse heritage, we are certain to make
progress on the things that we truly must value.
To achieve this, a lot of
things need to be changed.
One of the avenues we could explore
is changing the reward system that
incentivizes us to act within a narrow
spectrum of interests, that doesn’t include
environmental conservation of our flora
and fauna. Another is increasing awareness
of the global context we live in. our place
in it, and our power to effect sustainable
change through policy and decision-making.
We have to use business practices and
market mechanisms to produce positive
social change - better healthcare, better
education, preserving our cultural heritage
among others. We have to change the lens
through which we look at sustainability
as well. In the old view, it is simply a
competitive advantage through
differentiation. A sustainable product is
different and will appeal to a certain
group of people. But I argue that it
is fundamentally a much more
pioneering process. It is an uncharted
territory, what W. Chan Kim and Renee
Mauborgne call the 'Blue Ocean'.
The truth is that impact-oriented companies
and objectives are the new blue ocean.
And it is through sustainable
entrepreneurship that we chart this frontier.
The question then, ladies and gentlemen.
Are you ready to sail?
Created by Pratik Kunwar.