- [Instructor] Welcome back to class, everyone.
Today, we're going to be talking about sustainability,
mission, and vision.
The agenda for today,
we'll start with a few announcements.
Then, I'm going to talk to you about the Hedgehog Model
of success, community entrepreneurship,
sustainability, mission, and vision.
And this class will start to prepare you to think about what
kind of business that you're going to write
your marketing plan on and how to begin
to incorporate principles of sustainability
into the marketing plan and into this business.
I always like to start with announcements.
So your first homework,
which is based largely on this lecture,
will be due Tuesday, September 8th at 10.
I also have an academic integrity contract
that I would like you to sign.
That will be due Thursday, the 10th at 10,
and next week's topic will be situational analysis.
This will be a two part lecture and you are required
to listen to the first part before class on Tuesday,
and the second part before class on Thursday,
to understand the material and to be ready to be assessed.
So, here's homework one.
So I want you to think about a business that you would want
to start and answer these questions.
I start class with this so that you sort of know what
to look for as you are preparing for your homework.
And these questions will make a lot more sense
at the end of class, once we've gone all over this.
So the questions I want you to answer are what indicators
of sustainability are most important to you and why?
How will your business achieve them?
And what trade offs might you need to make to achieve them?
Here's the due date.
It will be worth five points.
Always submit homeworks on Blackboard.
You will have a homework due every Tuesday at 10,
for the most part with rare exceptions.
And it's always due on Blackboard, always as a doc or docx.
Please do not bring me any hard copies,
do not email me assignments.
And you can find them by simply going to Blackboard,
going to course materials, and the homework folder.
Here is how I grade.
If you do all of these things, you will earn full points.
I want to 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, one 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
a 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 you, can be your purpose in life.
You saw this diagram before.
Again, this is a basic overview of the course where,
and you see in the top left is the passion and ability.
And next week,
we're going to 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 does a, 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 the,
into their communities, rather than those like spaceships
that plopped 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 going to have you take a look at these
and think about how these will be achieved,
the benefits that they might bring,
that 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,
these goals that we saw earlier
into a somewhat simpler model is the so-called
Three Legged Stool Model of Sustainability.
And this is, 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 P's of people,
planet, and profit.
We think about what makes it sustainable.
What are the indicators?
How do, 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 well-being 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 of 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 trade-off is very important in my work,
that it's very rare that some action
is unambiguously good and does not create any sort
of a negative consequences for anything else.
Or another way to think about it in systems thinking
is that all the dimensions sort of
create positive feed lacks and drive each other,
that it's much more likely in 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,
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 going to 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,
something like something that is polluting,
or an eyesore, or otherwise something that community members
don't want.
Like, you know,
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.
That this is a, a NIMBY, something you don't want
in my backyard.
My hope is that your businesses and that your organizations
will be a 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 lie, 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, 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 interests.
You can see that this spells out what we do,
which is we do this research, big education outreach,
why we do it,
it's to serve the public interest and to advance
that 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'm 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 a 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.
Here are the details on when it is due and also,
I want you to sign an academic integrity contract,
which we will also find on Blackboard under homeworks.
And I would like you to do this by September 10th,
and we'll start class with announcements
and go through any questions and answers
that you might have on this material and do some discussion
of the content to make sure that you understand it well.
Thank you and I look forward to seeing you virtually
in class the next time.