When we are trying to change, we must think about who are the players. Business. Government. People. Academia. Media.
Democratic government has a short turnover time. Complex projects have a long timescale. This diminishes the power of government to help. Further, governments sometimes weaken themselves by trying to change the behaviour of people by using force, punishment, or reward. Human nature abhors this. The Berlin Wall story is an example here. Business, however, may change when offered carrots and sticks by government. Business is not human. But people buy from businesses. When government tries to tell people what to do, this affects business: business moves back towards business-as-usual because people are rebelling. They want their freedom. They don’t like being told what to do. They stick with the old ways. Business has tremendous power. Businesses regularly last over a century. They survive by adapting to people’s wants. But they also influence that through brands. They win the hearts and minds of people, they associate themselves with something powerful, a lifestyle, an emotion. They win people’s trust, and then they are able to drag their feet and the feet of people with them. That is what we mean when we say business is powerful. The time when they are so big and influential that they can avoid that need to be nimble and change according to people’s natural wants. But this anomaly doesn’t last forever. Ultimately, people can’t be hoodwinked and we return to an equilibrium where businesses are again doing what people want. But that delay, that brand power, is what people must work out how to deal with. Then, change will occur faster. What we achieve in terms of business will more closely follow the underlying need.
And what is the underlying need? Energy, emissions and materials efficiency.
Now, the two overwhelming winning factors in persuading people to do something seem to be to do with freedom and popularity. People don’t want to be told what to do. People follow their neighbours and families and friends. They want choices, convenience and can be influenced through peer pressure.
Businesses are beginning to wonder how they can make as much or more money when the focus is going to go away from products and consumers and on to solutions and solution-needers. The word “consumer” is going to become unfortunate, just as so many politically incorrect words of the (recent) past.
The new vocabulary must get us away from stuff. From material and products and their ownership and consumption. That has a sell-by date. Sure, some things must continue to be consumed, but those must go to a closed loop. As a solution-needer, a buyer of convenience, I will enter into agreements with providers who will solve my problems. They will retain ownership (or indeed in turn, have agreements with business further up the chain of agreements) of the objects, where they are ‘things’ that solve my problems.
For example, I need to travel. For all cases where I can’t walk, I may have an agreement with a service provider. They might handle for me whether it’ll require a taxi, a train, a bicycle, a tricycle, or a car. Let’s consider the case of when I need a car.
They might then provide me with a car that can carry four people long distances. In the future, that might most efficiently be done through a battery vehicle. As I drive and run out of power, I’ll swap the battery or (fast)-charge up at a charging point and then my destination.
When I don’t need it anymore, for a time, I can send a message and the car is taken away. All is well. The car will probably last a lifetime and be “future-proofed”, highly modular, and quite expensive to make. But it’ll generate revenue for those providing the travel solutions and everyone in that chain, including the manufacturer and parts makers.
Another example might be the heating of a commercial building. The solution provider isn’t asked how this is done, but has a contract to keep the temperature at certain levels during certain times of day. So they will naturally use long-lasting means to do that, and probably move towards a passive solution, in which very little or no heating is required: the building simply remains at 18-20C all the time, without assistance, through their modifications and possibly renewable generation techniques. There will be certain aesthetic requirements, but ultimately those who needed the solution are happy and will pay a revenue for this service to the provider.
These new business models can be applied in many areas; it is only a matter of time. We must explore what the implications of this might be. What might be the side-effects of this new paradigm. How can life for solution-needers improve? How can this lead to less poverty, disease, war, energy use an environmental damage while affording greater happiness? How can businesses flourish at the same time?
So we have a number of stakeholders with differing levels of power. Perhaps at the top of the pile now is (big) business. (Democratic) governments tend to squander their opportunity to lead and wield power by using the wrong techniques: laws and taxation which we know people rebel against. And ultimately the people have power through their needs.
There are a number of levers that come under the categories of technology, business model and behaviour change.
We can list and grade the stakeholders and list the levers. New technologies such as electrification, smart grids, cleanpower, electric vehicles, smart energy efficiency. New business models such as ’sale of service’ which naturally align interests and reduce “waste” (another old-fashioned word) and open-source design, which is fast and furious and leads to optimal solutions. And behaviour change levers such as are sped up through peer pressure, perceived popularity of new thoughts and ideas, and slowed down by reward and punishment rather than engagement and ‘working-with’.
Who can make sense of this complex soup of issues and show the best way forward towards healthy prosperity?