DreamMakers

Innovating for the Greater Good

Michele Hunt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781783533954
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000073416
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

DreamMakers: Innovating for the Greater Good profiles stories of businesses, cross-sector initiatives and movements and whole communities that are collaborating to create a flourishing world. They all share attitudes and beliefs that transcend: who they are, where they live, or their individual circumstances.

The book provides a new definition of success, shares the stories of a number of businesses and communities and examines how the people that lead these successful organizations have made a significant difference. Stories come from people based in very different types of industries and sectors, such as Waka Waka, a company that is helping to address 'energy poverty' for millions of families across the globe, Menlo Innovations, a socially innovative technology company which embeds 'Joy' as a business proposition, and the hugely successful cross-sector global movement, B Corporation.These people share how they are innovating for the greater good and making their personal hopes and dreams come true. They share their results and what they have learned. Their compelling stories are instructive as well as inspirational. They share the defining moments in their lives that shaped the insights, perspectives and the decisions that lead them on their journey. They go into detail about the actions they are taking to help transform their organizations, communities to enable them to innovate for the greater good. They show us that by taking personal responsibility to change our lives, businesses and our communities, we contribute to changing our world.

Part 1

Businesses as agents of world benefit

David Cooperrider, founder and Chair, Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit

1

Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit

Imagine a world of nine billion people with clean water, quality food, affordable housing and education, top-tier medical care, ubiquitous clean energy, dignified opportunities, thriving economies, and global peace and security (David Cooperrider, founder and Chair, Fowler Center Business as an Agent of World Benefit).

David Cooperrider believes deeply in this audacious, bodacious vision for our world. He is founder and Chair of the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit, at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University. David is also the co-creator of Appreciative Inquiry.

The Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit’s mission is “To advance new knowledge for transforming the world’s most complex problems into business opportunities for industry-leading innovation and world-shaping benefit.” The Fowler Center is also part of a rapidly growing, powerful global movement; a network of businesses and networks around the globe that are working to create a world where people can thrive, business can prosper, and the planet can flourish. In the 21st century, this vision has taken root and is beginning to blossom into what many believe will soon become a worldwide phenomenon. David’s journey to create the Fowler Center has had a significant impact on this movement. He has been on a quest to help advance this vision for 29 years.

It was in 1987 when David had an epiphany while having a conversation with Willis Harman, the renowned futurist and former president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, who studied global systems. Harman was sharing his scenarios on the trajectory of the world’s future, and the only scenario that was optimistic was one where businesses emerged as a powerful, creative force for good. David vividly remembers that defining moment: “My meeting Willis Harman in his office was like opening the doors in my mind.” The seeds of the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit were firmly planted that day.

The 1999 gathering of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, may have been the tipping point for this movement. At this historic event, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Kofi Annan challenged the leaders from business, labor, and civil society to collaborate to solve the most challenging problems facing our world. Kofi Annan sent an invitation to world business and civic leaders: “Let us choose to unite the power of markets with the strength of universal ideals. Let us choose to reconcile the creative forces of private entrepreneurship with the needs of the disadvantaged and the requirements of future generations” (Kofi Annan reported by David Cooperrider).

Inspired by that World Economic Forum, David and others at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University launched a world inquiry into business as an agent of world benefit. This research project created a data bank of stories of profitable business innovations in environmental sustainability and social entrepreneurship. During that research it became apparent to David and the research team that a world-shaping movement was emerging. After 2,000 interviews they realized that they were documenting a revolution.

After the horrific acts of terrorism in the USA on September 11, 2001, David felt a tremendous sense of urgency to help advance this movement. He solicited the advice of Peter Drucker, the management thought leader, who confirmed David’s belief that there were urgent and compelling reasons to help accelerate Business as an Agent of World Benefit into a global vision. In Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973)¹ Drucker cited examples of companies, including Sears and Ford, that had figured out how to build a business by taking on social ills. And late in his life, Drucker was still singing the same song. “Every single social and global issue of our day,” he declared, “is a business opportunity in disguise.”

In 2004, Secretary-General Kofi Annan invited David to design and facilitate a summit on global corporate citizenship at the United Nations. At this historic summit, Kofi Annan and 500 business leaders came together to explore ways that business, academia, and civil society could work together to make globalization work for everyone.

As a result of this summit, Case Western Reserve University, in cooperation with the Academy of Management and the UN Global Compact, created the Global Forum for Business as an Agent for World Benefit. At their 2006 Forum the strategic sponsors developed the platform for an ongoing triennial meeting of businesses who embraced this vision. The delegates came to the shared agreement that business had the opportunity to be one of the most creative forces on the planet; they collectively proclaimed: “The 21st century can become an unprecedented century of sustainable innovation where businesses can excel, people can thrive, and nature can flourish.” In 2014, the Global Forum for Business as an Agent for World Benefit held the third Global Forum, Flourish & Prosper, where over 500 corporate leaders and academic thought leaders came together to learn, share their stories and to collectively co-create ways to advance this movement.

Chuck and Char Fowler so deeply believe that businesses should do good, do well, they made an extraordinary gift of $7.5 million dollars to establish the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University and appointed David as director. Chuck Fowler served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Case Western Reserve and is the founder and Chairman of Fairmount Santrol, a producer of sand-based products based in Cleveland Ohio. The company is committed to helping to create sustainable futures for their people, the planet and all their stakeholders. Chuck has practiced these values for 40 years and he is committed to spreading them to businesses around the world. See Chapter 6 for more on Fairmount Santrol and Chuck Fowler.

FIGURE 1.1 Char and Chuck Fowler

AIM2Flourish

In response to David and Chuck’s vision and investment, the Fowler Center launched a global learning initiative to discover and recognize business innovations that are doing good and doing well. It started in 2012 with an OpenIDEO global crowdsourcing event. They invited people across cultures around the world to share their stories to help identify and celebrate businesses that are innovating for world benefit. People from 100 countries contributed their insights and ideas. This inquiry evolved into AIM2Flourish, a global process to identify, recognize, celebrate, and shine a light on the best-of-the-best business innovation stories that serve the greater good.

The mission of AIM2Flourish is “To connect students to 100,000 ingenious business leaders, to reveal their business innovations for good.” Their vision is that “Future business leaders solve the UN Global Goals for a flourishing world.” This initiative is co-sponsored by the UN Global Compact Principles for Responsible Management (PRME), a network of more than 600 leading business schools and management education institutions from 80 countries around the world, the Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative (GRLI), and AACSB International, the accreditation organization for 777 management schools.

My biggest dream is for us is to make a positive difference in the world, and to use the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit as an avenue to wake up businesses to enable them to see the challenges we face with the environment and the planet; and to figure out what we need to do for people and the planet to survive and flourish (Chuck Fowler, Chair, Case Western Reserve University Board of Directors, and Chairman, Fairmount Santrol).

AIM2Flourish has a unique approach to finding and reporting on business innovations that are helping to create a flourishing world. Business school students take the ownership for this phase of the process. Working through their professors, they seek out, discover, and interview these business leaders. The students use Appreciative Inquiry, a positive change methodology that focuses on identifying the strengths of an organization, to guide their work. They submit those stories online to AIM2Flourish.com using social media to spread the word about businesses innovation for good. This professor-facilitated process is a tremendous learning opportunity for the students, professors, and business leaders.

AIM2Flourish.com is the world’s first student-led global learning platform, showcasing business innovations that solve humanity’s greatest challenges. Business students around the world are using Appreciative Inquiry (strength-based interviews) and the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals to search out and report on world-changing innovations.

…

We’ll celebrate the best-of-the-best business innovation stories in June 2017 at the Fourth Global Forum on Discovering Flourishing Enterprise. This initiative represents an unparalleled opportunity to dynamically connect students, business leaders, management schools, media makers, and investors across geographies, generations, and industries (Author’s interview with Roberta Baskin, Executive Director, AIM2Flourish).

AIM2Flourish is inspiring the next generation of business leaders and business school educators to embrace the concept of businesses as an agent of world benefit. Here is what some of the AIM2Flourish students and professors are saying about their experience with this learning process:

Having an opportunity to conduct an interview and probe a particular innovation and flourishing story is already a great learning experience for us. Our paradigms somehow shifted toward a sustainable direction of conducting business (in the future) wherein social innovation will form the nuclei of our business models. Writing the story highly inspired us. That in itself is already a huge reward for us. (Bernard Bairoy, Student, IPMI International Business School, Indonesia).

I have found myself speaking of AIM2Flourish stories to family, friends, grandchildren, students, colleagues, whenever the opportunity presents itself. It’s an energizing and meaningful experience for the students, the business leaders who share their stories and for me to be a part of this world changing effort (Professor George Dionne, IESDE School of Management, Mexico).

The idea of the project itself, the flourishing idea, really touched their hearts, and made them really look at the subject, not as a matter of passing the grades or not, but more like, “ah, this is my calling!” (Professor Amelia Naim Indrajaya, IPMI International Business School, Indonesia).

Here is a peek at a few of the stories that students are discovering and reporting from around the world:

• Lucky Iron Fish. Responding to iron deficiency, a pervasive condition for 25% of the population in Cambodia that can lead to severe physical illness, impaired cognitive ability, and death, an entrepreneur created a simple solution: the Lucky Iron Fish, a piece of iron shaped like a fish to be used in cooking pots to increase iron levels in the Cambodian population.
• PT Tirta Marta: tapioca plastic bags. An Indonesian-based company is moving from producing plastic bags that take 500 years to degrade to making plastic bags that degrade in two weeks. Its affordable, eco-friendly bags are made from tapioca, which comes from the cassava root grown in the region and which the company sources from local tapioca cooperatives. It is making a positive social, economic and environmental impact on its community.
• PT Holcim: rice husk for fuel. An Indonesian company is substituting fossil fuel coal with agricultural waste to generate fuel. It projects savings of 500,000 tons of CO₂ each year for the next ten years.
• Divine Chocolate: fairtrade chocolate. The company is co-owned by Kuapa Kokoo, a farmers’ cooperative in Ghana that provides the cocoa for Divine, the first-ever farmer-owned Fairtrade chocolate bar. The 85,000 members share in the profits of the company and have a voice in the direction of the company.

AIM2Flourish is growing exponentially. It started in the spring of 2015 with 24 professors from 19 countries and has grown to over 100 colleges and universities. As of December 2016 more than 1,600 professors, students, and citizens from 56 countries are participating in this exciting global learning initiative; and it is still in its infancy. “It’s about today’s companies and their partners unleashing disruptive innovations that address humankind’s greatest transitional opportunities, on the pathway from non-sustainability to sustainability—to a world-wide state of flourishing” (David Cooperrider).

Jay Coen Gilbert, cofounder, B Lab

1. 1 Drucker, P. (1973). Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices. New York: Harper Collins.

2

B Corporations: business as a force for good

I sit on the Advisory Board of the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit. It was during a board meeting in 2012 that I first heard about B Lab and its innovative business model, the B Corporation (B Corp). There were about 600 companies who were in the B Corp community at that time; today there are more than 2,000 in 50 countries from 130 industries. They have one unifying goal: people using business as a force for good^TM. This idea has been a passion of mine since I worked at Herman Miller in the 1980s and back then we felt we were all alone. Many of our peer executives from other companies disagreed with our people-centered participative management system, our commitment to be good stewards of the environment, and our engagement in communities; some went as far as calling us socialist. They believed that the single aim of business was maximizing shareholder value and they were slaves of that aim. So I was elated to talk with Jay Coen Gilbert, a cofounder of B Lab, and learn more about B Corps and his personal story that led him to commit to going on this journey.

FIGURE 2.1 B Corp: “Using business as a force for good”

It is always fun to talk to people who are passionate about their vision, especially when their vision is big, bold and world-changing. Alth...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: the new definition of success
• Part 1 Businesses as agents of world benefit
• Part 2 Blurring the lines
• Part 3 We The People
• About the author