[Instructor] Welcome back to class, everyone.
Today we're going to be talking about
sustainability, mission, and vision.
I wanna start with a model for success,
the so-called hedgehog model that Jim Collins developed.
Now, the reason it's called a hedgehog model
is because it comes back to,
I think it's one of Aesop's fables,
where he talks about the hedgehog only does one thing well,
which is ball up with spines out,
and in spite of the fact
that the fox does very, very many things well,
this one thing that the hedgehog does well is so effective
that the fox is not able to eat the hedgehog.
I invite you to watch this video, but the bottom line is,
Collins talks about
the three keys to success of an enterprise.
First is, what are you passionate about?
What do you love doing?
What feels more like play than work?
What makes you excited?
What really is true to your values?
Because I will say that it's hard to be great
at anything that you are not passionate about,
which leads us to the next step.
What is something that you are good at?
What do you do extremely well?
What do you do hopefully better than anybody else on earth?
And finally, what can drive an economic engine?
What will create value in such a way
that someone will pay you to do it?
So if you can find,
if you can imagine this as a Venn diagram
where these three circles meet,
what are you passionate about, it's true to your values,
it's what you love, with something you do extremely well
and something that can drive an economic engine.
Finding where these three circles meet
is the key to success of any enterprise.
Since this is a community entrepreneurship
and we are hoping that you will develop and work
in businesses not only that are personally satisfying
and earn a profit and are sustainable,
but we also hope
that you will have broader community impact.
And that's where the circle
all the way on the right fits in,
that which the world needs,
and if you can find where these four circles meet,
where that green star is,
this is what this diagram calls purpose,
and this is what can be your purpose in life.
You saw this diagram before.
Again, this is a basic overview of the course,
and you see in the top left is the passion and ability,
and next week, we're gonna be talking about
the other two boxes on top, opportunity and external forces,
which will help you to design a marketing plan,
which will then create value,
which will help you to achieve the mission
of your organization.
This class is called Marketing for Community Entrepreneurs,
and I wanted to speak a little bit about my take
on what is a community entrepreneurship?
What is a community enterprise?
And I'm going to quote the chair of our department,
Dr. Kolodinsky, who says,
"Community enterprises are those
who are woven into their communities,
rather than those like spaceships that plop down
with shields and armor raised."
The idea being that these enterprises
that you will be developing and writing marketing plans for
will be a true asset to your community
and will create value and benefit
alongside of your communities,
and will not just exploit them for your own benefit.
I also encourage you to read my blog post,
which you can see the URL here,
which talks more about my own view
of community entrepreneurship.
This is a sustainability class,
so I want you to think about the concept of sustainability.
And in many ways, the gold standards
are the UN's Sustainable Development Goals,
and I'm just gonna have you take a look at these
and think about how these will be achieved,
the benefits that they might bring.
This is a very sort of specific mapped out sort of roadmap
of what we should be doing
to have a more sustainable planet and society and economy.
And as you do this, I want you to think about
how can your business contribute,
and how can contributing this create opportunity?
How are needs not being met?
And how can your business or enterprise meet these needs
in ways that further these goals?
One model that has broken down these goals
that we saw earlier
into a somewhat simpler model
is the so-called three-legged stool model of sustainability,
and this comes from the world of sustainable agriculture,
and thinking that a stool needs three legs
and it needs all three legs to be stable,
otherwise it isn't a stool.
And so to have sustainability,
that you have to have the economy, society,
and the environment sort of working in a concert.
This is also known as the three Ps
of people, planet, and profit.
We think about what makes it sustainable.
What are the indicators?
What do we look for to think about it?
What is good for the environment?
What is economically sound, and what is socially just?
Thinking about each one, so we start with the environment.
What can a business do
to be more environmentally sustainable?
What can it do to have a beneficial
or at least less detrimental impact on the planet?
And specifically, what are the indicators?
What would you look for if you were going to judge
whether a business is environmentally sustainable?
What would you look for?
What are those indicators?
How would you know it when you see it?
How would you measure it?
And we're going to brainstorm these in class.
In the same way,
we can think about what makes social sustainability,
and here are a few that I have been pondering.
Thinking about the wellbeing of your employees,
making charitable donations,
promoting diversity in the workplace,
giving employees time to serve in organizations.
Things like that are some of the well-known indicators.
Another indicator that I think is important
is do the people who work at a business,
would they feel like they could shop there or eat there
or buy the product?
Both can they afford to,
and would they feel welcome there?
Do they feel like people like me
would feel welcome and belong in a business like that,
to eat there, to shop there, to buy those products?
That's one indicator of social sustainability.
And to what extent are the owners, managers, and employees
sort of jointly integrated into the community?
What sort of community ties do they have outside of work?
Might be another way of thinking about it.
And last, what are the indicators
of economic sustainability?
What can a firm do to create wealth and value for itself,
but do so equitably?
How can it create a shared and enduring prosperity
in its community?
It's certainly important that a business earn a fair profit
and earn a fair return
to the entrepreneur's time and effort and investment,
but it's also important
that broader stakeholders benefit as well.
A few things that I've thought about
include paying a living wage to your employees,
supporting other local businesses, and others.
And again, we can discuss this when we do so in class.
As an economist,
the idea of a tradeoff is very important in my work,
that it's very rare that some action is unambiguously good
and does not create any sort of negative consequences
for anything else.
Or another way to to think about it in systems thinking
is that all the dimensions
sort of create positive feedbacks and drive each other,
that it's much more likely in the the real world
that by promoting one indicator,
it might make it a little harder
for another indicator to be achieved.
Like for example, if you pay a very high wage,
if you support local businesses,
if you use very highly environmentally friendly practices,
it may be that your costs of production
will be higher than your competitors'
which mean that you will likely have to charge
a higher price for this good,
and therefore, this good may not be as affordable
to a broad base of consumers.
So by sort of pursuing
these economic and environmental goals,
you may have to sacrifice some of the social ones.
And again, we're gonna be discussing more examples of this.
Another indication of community enterprise
is how much are you wanted in your community?
So many of you may have heard of the term of a NIMBY,
a not in my backyard,
like something that is polluting or an eyesore
or otherwise something that community members don't want.
Like they don't want a toxic waste dump
or a trash incinerator right next to their house
or right next to a park where they might hang out.
This is a NIMBY, something you don't want in my backyard.
My hope is that your businesses and that your organizations
will be YIMBYs,
that if you hear that this business is moving in next door,
if the place where you want to locate the people there
think this is a wonderful idea.
It's going to really enhance our community,
contribute to our wellbeing,
that this would be a YIMBY, a yes in my backyard.
And again, it is my hope that the organizations
and businesses that you work for and develop
and do your marketing plans on
will be YIMBYs instead of NIMBYs.
An important way
that you can codify your sustainability values
and all the values
that your business or organization hold dear
is in the mission and vision statements.
So a mission statement,
it outlines what are the primary objectives
for an organization?
Why does it exist?
It can be important for an internal audience,
in that it helps to guide what you do,
and in some cases, sort of draw a box around what you do,
and there may be certain activities that are a great idea.
They're needed, they're important, they would benefit,
but it's just not you, it's just not what you do,
and hopefully another organization will do so.
They tend to be very clear and succinct
and tell what you do and for whom.
This is CDAE's mission,
that CDAE supports local, sustainable, regional,
and international communities
through research, education, outreach
that serve the public interest.
You can see that this spells out what we do,
which is we do this research and education outreach.
Why we do it, it's to serve the public interest
and to advance the wellbeing, and for whom?
The communities, both local to international,
in which we work.
Another way that you can codify your values
is with a vision statement.
And this says, if I am successful,
what will the world look like?
What is my aspiration?
What do I hope to accomplish?
What would the world look like if we are successful?
Two very well known ones that I am particularly fond of
is Martin Luther King's "I have a dream"
and John Lennon's "Imagine."
Now, I don't know if they were specifically laid out
as vision statements,
but I think they both have very powerful,
draw a very powerful picture
of what the world could look like
and what a better world is like.
And in my opinion, sadly, we have not achieved either one.
A vision statement should be short, achievable, measurable.
It should be bold and daring,
and it should be logically linked to the mission,
the values, and the goals of the organization.
So again, by creating mission and vision statements,
it goes a long way toward,
with the mission statement, what do we do?
Who do we do it for?
Why do we exist?
And the vision statement, what do we aspire to?
What do we hope the world will look like
if we are successful?
Here are the key takeaways.
We talked about community entrepreneurship,
sustainable businesses,
and the mission and vision statements.
So again, here is your homework assignment.
Please answer these questions.
Thank you, and I look forward to seeing you
virtually in class the next time.