Strategy in to action - B Leaders for Good Summit, Rome 2022.

Kim Cramer & Alexander Koene in Rome at the B Leaders for good Summit 2022.

From 15 till 18 June I visited Rome, with my business partner Kim Cramer and some 700 other business leaders from around the globe. We attended the first B for Good Leaders Summit 2022 and what a joy it was to be in the eternal city, together with such a large group of progressive and forward-thinking business leaders. We share a similar value system and profoundly believe that business can be a source for good. This made it a blast to meet, greet and discuss actions, to be energized and inspired for new actions and to make new friends. 

The ‘Business for Good Leaders Summit’ in Rome was the world’s first meeting of the ‘business-for-good’ movement. Founders, owners, board members, C-Suite executives and investors came to join forces. During 2,5 days we shared projects, ventures and innovations and create business opportunities and partnerships leading business to the regenerative economy the world needs.

The summit was organized around 5 themes; we explored the latest thinking in the field of:

• Regenerative Economy

• Leadership

• B Corps

• Sustainable Finance

• Corporate Activism

What resonated afterwards most for me personally were 2 topics, that is 1. Radical interdependence and 2. Intergenerational strategizing.

How to better align our actions through radical interdependence?

The perspective of radical interdependence provides me with an alternative way of thinking. It is founded on a distinctive philosophical principle that differs from what currently dominates the capitalist and individualist way of thinking in the World. It promotes a different worldview and maybe even builds on the Buddhist ‘truth’ about the nature of our existence, and departs from our common Western World essentialism and individualism. Interdependence offers a different starting point for thinking about the world we live in, one it characterizes as profoundly interdependent, wherein everything there is, is connected by nature. It also maintains that the failure to appreciate the full extent of interdependence limits our human potential and is the ultimate source of all conflicts, up to and including wars, climate crises, and social injustice.

Having lived most of my life in neoliberal capitalist societies, I still struggle with how to reconcile the concept of radical interdependence with that of free-market competition. However, it might be fair to say that the challenges the world is facing, are too large to be solved with competition alone, and radical collaboration might be the better way forward. So this leads me to a world in which we not only see further integration and formation of regenerative ecosystems within verticals, but also the emergence of interdependent ecosystems consisting of various horizontals.

Strategy in to action:

My take out on this point is that BR-ND People must explore and put in place further cooperation with organizations who pursue more or less what we do. We have already started a flirt with several B Corps in the Netherlands to see how we can better work together and jointly make more impact. The creation of the Let’s play equal business game is a nice example. Also, I think we must be open to cooperation with B Corps in Europe and seek to improve the quality of our services through collaboration.

Are we being good ancestors? How to pursue clever intergenerational strategies?

During the summit, we were challenged to stop with current short-termism in returns, but instead, focus on long-term strategies for the benefit of future generations. How we go about organizing our resources and efforts should no longer be aimed at financial returns for ourselves and our shareholders in the short term, but at value creation for society and for the many generations to come. Basically, every business decision should be answered with the interest of our children and their children in mind. Would we then still package foods in single-serve plastics? Would we then continue running our factories on fossil fuels? Would we still have quarterly fashion collections per year? Would we still eat meat daily? Probably not. Would we still run our economies and business on GDP or top-line growth? Knowing that these numbers do not include externalities, nor are they based on true pricing. Not!

My generation and the one before have for sure not been good ancestors. We leave behind a world worse than how we inherited it. We leave behind a world facing a climate disaster of unprecedented order.

To do something about this, we should consider the impact of our actions on future generations. We could for example also literally involve the next generation in our decision-making. Why do boards of management have no representatives of the future generation at their tables? How difficult can it be? Apart from better decisions, the meetings would also be more fun! 

Strategy in to action:

We started with this ourselves already some years ago by appointing one seat on our supervisory board to a youngster. And for a recent client project we made the leadership listen to the voice of schoolchildren on the topic of poverty. To put more of this in our future actions, I believe we should write in our future project plans interventions to include children and give them a clear voice.

That’s it for now.

Alexander