Transcriber: Reiko Bovee Reviewer: Mile Živković
You may think that Darwin said,
"Evolution is determined by the survival of the fittest."
When in fact what he astutely observed
was that it is not the survival of the fittest,
but rather, the survival of the fitness within one's ecosystem
that actually determines a species' success.
Through exciting new insights in the field of biology,
we are beginning to understand just how true this is.
And we are beginning to see how the evolution of business
is following a similar path, often called "social enterprise."
Suzanne Simard is an ecology professor at the University of British Columbia.
She studies how plants interact through the beneficial fungal network
that connects them below ground.
The plant roots actually connect to the fungi
and form a symbiosis known as a mycorrhiza.
Simard and her colleagues exposed a rare form of carbon, C13 and C14,
in a form of CO2 to a tree.
That tree then absorbed that carbon through photosynthesis
and they were able to track as that carbon went through the trees
down through this mycorrhizal network and up into other trees
and even other species of trees in the form of amino acids.
They also found that water and warning signals
also are similarly stealthily passed in this mycorrhizal network
she calls the "wood wide web."
This sort of mutualism is a symbiosis between plants and fungi.
When it benefits both, this sort of symbiosis
is called "mutualism."
Natural selection is not what we once thought.
We are not breeding for our own best fitness,
but rather how well we fit in to the ecosystem around us
and can care for our community.
It's time that we tune in to this new metanarrative
of the true nature of Nature.
The thing is, I am not even a biologist;
I am a business woman.
I am inspired by the 3.8 billion-year old innovation incubator
called life.
Being inspired by nature for design is called biomimicry.
And it's innovations in this field that fuel my work
as a social entrepreneur.
Social enterprise, short for socially beneficial enterprise,
is defined by two things: one, its primary purpose;
it's some sort of social or environmental mission.
And two, it has some sort of commercial activity.
Another way to look at this is that it makes sense
as it creates its social value,
and it makes cents, with a "C",
as it creates its financial value.
Social enterprises solve pressing environmental and social problems
with the tools of business and the efficiencies of the marketplace.
They are often more capable at solving problems
than government, business or nonprofit.
They are more resourceful and efficient than government,
more innovative and collaborative than businesses
and more financially sustainable than nonprofits.
Social enterprises take up many different forms
and are popping up all over the world.
There's Zidisha, in Kenya, which is a microfinance organization
that works with local women entrepreneurs
so that they can start their own social enterprises.
And there's Stag Dinning Group, a supper club in California
that works with local sustainable farms in order to support that growing network.
Interestingly, these social enterprises often take an ecosystem approach,
partnering with other organizations in order to create shared value;
their customers, their suppliers, even the competitors
are often better off by working with them.
This should sound familiar; it's mutualism.
The enterprise and the environment that it works within work together
in order to create a beneficial symbiotic relationship.
Business is shifting away from the "everyone for themselves" model,
the old paradigm of survival of the fittest,
towards a celebration of the interconnection and interdependence
that fuels life and business for that matter.
We are realizing the power of this interdependence just in time.
Business as usual - over the next 50 years,
we are going to see 95% of our coral reefs die from bleaching.
200 million climate refugees and our global GDP could drop by 5%.
We are realizing the power of this interdependence just in time
so that we can deliver our new discoveries
about the solutions for our world faster than ever
at a time when we need it the most.
My own view of where humanity lies on the timeline of life is borrowed
from my muse, Buckminster Fuller.
He said that humanity now is like a baby chick,
that has just hatched from its eggshell.
After using up all of our trial-and-error, embryonic fluid - our fossil fuels -
we now have everything we need in order to be a complete success.
It might seem like this is the end of the world,
when really this is just a beginning.
It's time that we hatch and stand on our own two feet
and learn to fly.
How are we going to do this?
I think that social enterprise is part of the solution.
There are three different business models:
there is integrated social enterprises,
in which making sense and making cents activities overlap,
utilizing commerce to fund social impact as part of a larger mix of programs.
My example here is a project drawdown, my latest endeavor.
We're scouting the world for the world's best climate solutions,
and we're compiling the best available information into a book
that we are going to sell.
We also have other programs like campaigns and curriculums
in a digital platform, all in the service
of creating a better narrative around climate change.
We need to move away from complacency and toward agency.
There's also external social enterprises.
This is a different business model in which the two activities are separate,
making sense and making cents.
My example here is Hero Hatchery.
It is a crowdfunded climate activist fellowship,
that my husband and I cofounded with the audacious goal
to create the Rosa Parks of the climate movement.
We created a very low-fee crowdfunding service
and we sell this service in order to fund our program.
My third example is the embedded social enterprise business model,
in which the two activities are one and the same.
My example here is New Leaf Paper, with the mission of halting deforestation
by increasing the amount of recycled paper content
within the paper industry.
With every sale it makes, it furthers its mission.
As its financial revenues increase,
its measurable positive social impact also increases.
Let's look at the current model of business.
As my colleague, Paul Hawken, likes to say:
"We are stealing the future, selling it to the present and calling it GDP."
We are depleting our natural capital and calling it income,
and, in the process, causing the 6th mass extinction,
global climate collapse and innumerable other disruptions
to our perfectly designed spaceship, Earth.
A wiser approach would be to grow capital in the present for all,
thus leading to stronger businesses in the future.
As Janine Benyus, the founder of the Biomimicry Institute likes to say,
"Life creates conditions conducive to life."
Don't you think commerce should create conditions conducive to commerce?
Shouldn't social enterprise just be all enterprise?
Now that we can clearly see life's design principles,
we can rebuild our systems of commerce
to reflect that which is simply proven to work over time.
What would it look like
if all businesses were social enterprise?
What a wonderful world that would be!
Thank you.
(Applause)