The Une, Weekly #15 — The Economics

Hi there, welcome to The Une, Weekly #15. This week was a week of conversations about the success and failure of businesses trying to transform the systems they operate in. Economics cannot be ignored. And neither can people and ecosystems. So what do we do?

The Takeaway
The financial reality of impact-driven organisations came up in several talks we had last week. One takeaway kept returning in each conversation: no organisation survives on intention.

If the money doesn’t add up, no matter the mechanism behind it, nothing gets the chance to exist.

The economics have to work.
But so do the conditions that make that economics possible.

Because the reality is, if you create commercial value alone, without regard for the wellbeing of people and nature, your business survives exactly as long as its environment can carry it. Not a day longer. And days are counting.

The Confusion
Many innovative start-ups that set out to transform food, fashion, agriculture, finance and energy are not making it.

There are success stories too, but as money becomes more expensive, politics changes and futures become more unpredictable, the world is not as kind to them as it was a few years ago.

Politics is ambiguous, to say the least, about our priorities.
Consumers are past the first green trends and more conscious about quality and price.
B Corp has taken a real credibility hit, with well-known companies handing back their certification.
Corporates are easing sustainability ambitions under investor pressure for returns.

Meanwhile: record-breaking impacts from a destabilising natural world, conflict driven by anticipated resource scarcity, growing inequality.

How do we reconcile all this?

The Choice
We all depend on healthy, reciprocal relationships with our environment.
That is no different for invented structures like businesses.

Nothing survives the loss of the conditions it depends on.

In the daily work there are difficult choices and trade-offs to make.

Budget against footprint.
Growth against care.
This quarter against the next decade.

While these are tough decisions to make, the context they exist in is one of an undeniable underlying relationship.

A business depends on people.
People depend on healthy societies.
And all of us depend on the living systems that make life possible.

So the question isn't whether these things matter to the business, but how we integrate it in the core of how we run it.

The Fundament
As we argued before, every business creates multiple forms of value.

It creates value for its customers.
For the people who work there.
For society.
For the natural world.
And, of course, for itself.

The impact is there.

Intentionally or not.
Positively or not.

The multiple value a business creates is not separate from its economic value. It shapes the conditions in which that economic value can be created and sustained.

Let’s say this again: what we create for people and the planet is not separate from the value of the organisation.

But as long as those three forms of value are not valued equally within the economic system, commercial value alone will remain the dominant decision metric.

When we understand the value we create in its fullness, and use that understanding to shape what the organisation is here to do, we can be more intentional about and therefore more effective with the positive impact we make.

Because the more value an organisation creates for people, society and the living world, the stronger the conditions can become for the organisation itself.

The relationship works both ways.

Which is why we keep coming back to integration: commercial, social and ecological value held together as the foundation for how you go about in the world. Not three competing agendas, but one logic, with three dimensions.

Multiple value creation as the fundament for building better futures together.

Curious how you it can work for you? 👋 hello@une.eco

Move as one. For the benefit of all.

— Laurens & Jorn