Young people moving social entrepreneurship and conscious capitalism forward
Quality-of-life opportunities to increase for capitalists
Monday March 30, 2009 -- Jennifer Higgs
There are vast waves of the best and brightest young people who want to be entrepreneurial creators and have meaning and purpose through their work, says Michael Strong.

The young people coming out of college are also radically committed to conscious capitalism notes Strong, CEO of FLOW and co-author of Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World’s Problems.

“The idealistic bright young people less and less want to go into a conventional corporation, they don’t want to go work for government, they don’t want to be poor all their lives and working for NGOs,” he says.

“More and more of them want to be entrepreneurial and creative, and have the potential at least for a comfortable living and at the same time they all want meaning and purpose,” he says.

The book states that “we are entering the age of meaning” and there will be an increasing demand for meaningful work.

“Meaning comes from engagement in positive work that challenges our personal capacity combined with knowledge that our positive work is making a larger contribution to the overall well-being of humanity and life on the planet.”

This work can also be done through intrapreneurship, says Strong, where people have freedom to create new products within an existing organization, but the business must still be committed to doing good.

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market and FLOW co-founder, defines conscious capitalism as having a deeper purpose and stakeholder model. A deeper purpose creates meaning for stakeholders and expresses a reason for the company to exist beyond profits. The stakeholder model considers shareholders, customers, employees, suppliers, communities and the environment that take part in the success of the business.

An organization’s deeper purpose may be pluralistic, such as to create extraordinarily beautiful things, says Strong.

Strong points to Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind, which describes how in the 21st century growth industries will be related to beauty, charm, empathy, community, warmth, meaning and purpose. These characteristics have not traditionally been part of business in the past but associated with quality of life, says Strong.

“The quality-of-life opportunities for capitalists are going to grow considerably,” Strong says, noting the low-cost value products will be a shrinking market in the developed world.

Pink notes that there will be three A’s forcing this to happen — Asia, automation and abundance, referring to the low prices of Chinese manufacturing and more low-cost ways to produce with most people already having enough stuff in their lives.

Strong was an educational entrepreneur for 15 years.

“I see entrepreneurial opportunities in education increasing considerably, where there’s much greater emphasis on not only the academic performance of students but to happiness and well-being of young people,” he says.

The health care field also has many opportunities for entrepreneurship with a focus on prevention and taking a holistic, whole health approach, says Strong.

Communities have the opportunity to increase the connections between houses, designing “mini universes” where people feel safe and happy, says Strong.

“We are very optimistic about a world in which entrepreneurs actually transcend a lot of the shallow, crass, noisy, ugly greed-based materialism that we see now,” says Strong, adding emphasis will be on creating a more beautiful world.

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