“It is not for us to forecast the future, but to shape it”. Antoine de Saint-Exupery
In Sales Trend 6 we explored decarbonised sales systems and sales strategies. In Sales Trends 7 we look at economic models that promote decarbonised systems and organisations.
Key operating models that can be deployed now and in the immediate future to create decarbonised economies, business models, and in turn sales systems and operations include Circular Economy, GreenShoring, and Doughnut Economics.
Circular Economy
Circular Economy is an alternative to the linear “Take, Make, Consume and Dispose” mindset and business model which can help deliver a decarbonised economy. The Circular Economy is a functional operating system that is helping fast track a decarbonised economy and society. The concept was developed in 1976 by Walter Stahel and Genevieve Reday in a research report to the European Commission, “The Potential for Substituting Manpower for Energy”, that sketched the vision of an economy in loops (or circular economy) and its impact on job creation, economic competitiveness, resource savings and waste prevention.
Unlike the human world where we have adopted, for many years as part of the industrial revolution, a linear economic approach to growth where we end up with landfills, the Circular Economy is a restorative and regulative model by design. What used to be regarded as waste can be turned into a resource. Design and production are made with the end of the product lifecycle in mind and taking into account the materials involved.
The Circular Economy aims to keep products, components, and materials at their highest utility and value at all times. It preserves and enhances natural capital, optimises resource yields, and minimises systems risks, and it works at every scale.
Circular Economy Characteristics:
- Design out waste (with biological materials) non-toxic, so they can be simple composted; design out waste within technical materials (man-made compounds) designed to be used again with minimal energy and highest quality retention
- Build resilience through diversity (modularity, versatility, and adaptability)
- Work towards energy from renewable sources
- Think in systems: Elements are considered in relation to their environmental and social context.
- Think in cascades – extract additional value from products and materials by cascading them through other applications.
Going Local & Greenshoring
Going Local & Greenshoring works very well alongside Circular Economy. It’s about creating local manufacturing hubs and by default local sales and service hubs to ensure easy local access to supply of goods and services thus dramatically reducing carbon emissions. This approach has been accelerated in response to the major supply chain issues caused by COVID-19. More about the impact of this on sales and service workforce structures in Trend 8.
Doughnut Economics
Now combine the Circular Economy (microeconomic model) with Doughnut Economics (as the macroeconomic model).
Kate Raworth, architect of the sustainable economic model, Doughnut Economics and English economist, has turned current economic thinking on its head. And it makes sense.
Traditional economic theory promotes the ‘circular’ flow of goods and money but traditional economic thinking does not take into account the complex system of humanity – The Social Foundations of peace & justice, social exchange, political voice, social equality, housing, networks, income & work, education, health, food, water, energy and gender equality – the essentials for life, and the 9 planetary boundaries: climate change, ocean acidification, chemical pollution, nitrogen & phosphorous loading, freshwater withdrawals, land conversion, biodiversity loss, air pollution and ozone layer depletion.
With 60+ years of traditional economic growth now floundering, we need to rethink and reimagine how we can progress and at the same time decarbonise our economies, businesses, sales systems and operations.
Based on the current degradation of the world’s resources and the climate crisis, using the Doughnut Economic model would be called sanity. I liken the Doughnut Economic Model to as if we were all living on a spaceship and had to keep ourselves alive for years without access to any outside means. Because that is what our world is – one giant spaceship with limited resources powered by the sun.
With this as a backdrop and everything we need at hand; we have everything we need to create decarbonised businesses, sales systems, and strategies.
Human beings have demonstrated time and time again their ingenuity. We have amazing talent to deal with challenges and create new ideas, new services, new systems to deal with adversity.
There’s a world of opportunity to re-think and re-design the way we produce, sell, and consume.
There is so much opportunity here if we go out on a limb and rethink how we do business, rethink progress, rethink economics, and rethink society.
The future of the world is literally in our hands.
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