Natural Capitalism: creating the next industrial revolution
I’m not a great fan of most business books. It’s always struck me that if the ideas expounded therein are so blindingly brilliant, why is the authors writing about it instead of developing a great business, or ‘walking the talk’?
I came across a book the other day however that merits mention as it’s about a sea change in the way business should be thinking if it is to survive and thrive in the next industrial revolution - one that will take place through necessity and cannot be stopped because our resource store is fast becoming depleted.
This is fast becoming a ‘do or die’ era that we are entering now in the 21st century and if you are a CEO or a CFO, it’s worth a look – just Google the title (it’s the heading of this entry), there are even free chapters to download!
The book stems from the reality that we, in the business community, are entering an era of environmental limits – reduced availability of oil, gas, water, fibre, etc. - and posits four interlinked business principles that will shape the new global economy.
These are: radically increased resource productivity, redesigning industry on biological models with closed loops and zero waste, shifting from the sale of goods (for example, light bulbs) to the provision of services (illumination) and reinvesting in the natural capital that is the basis of future prosperity.
You can go into the detail for yourself (and I encourage you to do so) but the essence of the proposition is straightforward: business-as-usual will not do any longer and there is a actually a far brighter future ahead if we go back to, what I have often referred to in this column as, the basics of sustainability.
What is good about this book is that it suggests a roadmap and gives real-world examples at a time when many books are being written that do no more than try to accentuate the doom and gloom of our situation and, ultimately, call on the establishment of interest and pressure groups to put pressure on politicians to act.
Why bother? We see every day that the politicians, firstly, never act in time (Gordon Brown and the 3 reports on HBOS); secondly, when they do act, they invariably get it wrong (since the age for sex education has been lowered teenage pregnancy in this country has risen by 30%… so they’re going to lower it again!) and, lastly, only act to serve themselves, not the business community or the consumer (‘Home’ Secretary Jacqui Smith… ‘nuff said!).
An old chestnut of mine is worth repeating. We got us into this mess, we need to act to get us out of it.
Every business leader knows that the moon is a tough target to aim for, but if you don’t, you’ll not even reach the stratosphere; so we may not be able to achieve a biological business model with closed loops and zero waste today… but we should at least start to re-engineer the business with this aim in mind.
Radically increased resource productivity is possible now, after all, we’re mostly just wasting resources after the excesses we implemented in nineties and the reason we are so incapable of getting out of this recession more readily is actually because we have shifted from a manufacturing to a service economy.
Finally, since we are being forced to think again about where we invest and in what we invest, now would be a good time to consider investing in the ‘natural capital that is the basis of [our] future prosperity’.
I’m not naïve enough to believe that any of you will act today… but at least expand your knowledge and think about it.
