Fireflies of social change

In a landmark conference organised by the UN in 2006, international business leaders met deans of management schools and their students. Around 50 business leaders were invited by the Global Compact, a UN organisation, to motivate businesses to contribute to global goals for reducing environmental degradation, persistent poverty, and increasing inequality. They met with dozens of deans of management schools as well as hundreds of students in person and online, invited by the Academy of Management, the international association of management schools. I participated in the meeting with Prof CK Prahalad, author of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.

Advertisement

The present structures favour those who have the most and discriminate against those who have historically had little.

The meeting was designed to be participative, with many discussions in which the students’ views were heard. A student posted her reflection in the debate. ‘Making profits is easy, changing the world is hard,’ she said. Another said management schools taught methods for increasing efficiency and profits; they did not teach ways for understanding human aspirations and improving social justice. Management students are taught to give more attention to data and, sadly, less to listening to common people.

A billionaire philanthropist sitting beside me was exasperated by the proceedings. When pollution of rivers and depletion of fresh water sources was being discussed, he said, ‘They still don’t get it. Technology will find solutions: rocket science is advancing rapidly. When we run out of water on Earth, we will find another planet with water and go there.’

His predictions of technological advance seem to be coming true. Some of the world’s most admired business innovators — Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson — are promising commercial space travel. Pre-bookings of tickets costing millions of dollars are open for those who can afford them. (Perhaps the billionaire who made the prediction has bought one already.) Meanwhile, billions on Earth are waiting for benefits to trickle down to them from technologies owned by the wealthiest nations and the wealthiest people.

The billions most harmed by climate change were heard by the wealthy few in Sharm el-Sheikh in COP27. Global climate has been harmed by the same technologies that have fuelled the economic growth of rich nations who have only 10% of the world’s population. Rich people are unwilling to change their own lifestyles, which have caused the most harm to the global environment. They demand that poor people, who are struggling to survive, must reduce their carbon footprints faster. They want poorer countries, where 90% live, to not use carbon-based technologies any longer and shift to renewables faster, while they take their own time to change.

Human civilisation is at a turning point. The limitations of the wealthy and powerful in solving the problems of the world are exposed. The rapid fall of Musk, an imagined saviour, from grace is a sign. He is admired as a bold innovator who upended the hydro-carbon guzzling automobile industry to go electric. His enterprise, Space-X, is the leader in privately funded rocket technology. He has become the richest man in the world with ventures valued the most by stock markets. In his hubris, his values have been exposed and a role model for young entrepreneurs has crashed. Musk does not care about the people who work in his enterprises. They must work 24×7 to make his enterprises successful. When he does not care even for those whose dedication he needs for his glory, can he really care about the billions being left behind who are mere numbers in his mental spreadsheet?

‘Innovation’ and ‘entrepreneurship’ have become buzzwords in the business world. They are essential parts of the curriculum of management schools. They are also infecting the curriculums for schoolchildren. We should beware of the concepts being taught, and the role models of innovation and entrepreneurship provided. Entrepreneurs who have used the power of digital technology to increase their wealth are often the role models, many of whom are from the ‘Silicon Valleys’ of California and India. A measure of the entrepreneurship culture of a nation is the number of unicorns it produces, i.e., financial ventures that are quickly assigned high values in the stock market. Sadly, financial values often trample upon human values, as the Musk story reveals. Like a rocket, the wealth of a few unicorns rises very fast while common people on the ground look up in envy.

A new breed of business entrepreneurs is required to change the world for the better for everyone. Innovative entrepreneurs are also essential in the social sector to change the structures of society and the economy. The present structures favour those who have the most, and they discriminate against those who have historically had little. The new entrepreneurs must measure the success of their ventures by their impacts on the dignity and wealth of common people, rather than the impressions they make on financial investors.

New models of leadership are essential to improve the world equitably. A new theory of change is required: less from the top, more from the ground. The youth need more ‘systems change leaders’ who facilitate change on the ground as their role models, rather than unicorns and bosses on top of large organisations in business, government, and development agencies.

Systems change leaders are humble: they know that changing embedded power structures is hard. Systems leaders are catalysts. They stimulate movements for change within their own communities. They courageously take small steps and nudge change in power relationships in their own local world. There are millions of such leaders in India already. They are fireflies with their own inner light as their power source. They bring hope to their communities and stir ripples of cooperative change. Like ripples in the water, many such movements of change can combine into powerful waves of change to improve the world for everyone. We must encourage and support the fireflies around us.