LENGTH MATTERS:
How might we bring a long-term perspective to near-term decisions?
Consumers, organizational leaders and politicians make daily decisions that will affect our families, communities, prosperity and habitat for decades into the future. How would our culture and world be different if we made decisions in consideration of the well-being of our children’s children, rather than only looking at the next tweet, fiscal quarter or electoral cycle?
February’s DwD explored approaches to over-coming “short-termism” with a long-term view to make our resources and systems more sustainable.
- Unpack the assumptions that keep us locked into a short time frame
- See what our decisions might look like if framed in a long view
- Explore how a values shift might reframe our perspective
- Jam ideas on new incentive structures that could influence our behaviour
References:
- 2050: What if we get it right? (CBC Radio’s Quirks and Quarks)
- >Roger Martin on Fixing Corporate Short-termism
- Obama rejects smog regulation to avoid election year controversy
- Long Now Foundation seminars and blog
- Amazon shows advantage in planning long term
- The role of long-term thinking in Creating Shared Value
- A report on short-termism and corporate ethics
Images from the session
How do our values drive our decisions? How might that skew us towards a short-term view?
What incentive structures might shift values such that our decisions will consider a long-term view?
Business Model Innovation for Social Entrepreneurship
How can social organizations thrive in a post-funding society?
A special innovation circle session was held with Maya Roy and the Newcomer Women’s Services Toronto. Through turbulent economic times, Maya and staff leadership grew a team of committed members and made the organization a successful NGO for helping new families settle into Toronto. With impending budget cuts, they are faced with an immediate need to change their business model from a publicly supported service to a social entrepreneurial model.
York University’s Antony Upward presented the “Strongly Sustainable” Business Model Canvas (an innovation of the BMG canvas) the framework for group ideation and collaborative design. In large and small group sessions, the group explored innovation of business and revenue models, service provision, new relationships and communications channels. As the first public unveiling of the research and design of the “strongly sustainable” business model, we gained valuable and practical feedback on the applications of the new approach.
Generating one group’s model based on its “What If” starting point (orange label).
Sharing the group’s model with the whole and Antony collecting and aggregating the unique values of each in a common map.
Our apologies to any who found it difficult to locate the session – we held DwD at OCAD University’s graduate studies campus, 205 Richmond St. for one time only.