Purpose Inspired: by Wayne Visser

Given the rules of the game and key uncertainties just described, we have chosen two contrasting scenarios to illustrate how the future landscape of business and the world could turn out. As mentione…

In constructing scenarios for the future, key uncertainties are those variables that could go one way or the other; they are the pivotal points on which the future swivels. It is critical that we exp…

The rules of the game are the conditions that we are fairly certain will apply within the foreseeable future. They govern our behaviour and up to a point are beyond our control. Unlike the rules of s…

In the present era of globalisation, it is sacrilege to criticise unrestricted free trade when in the company of the pride. Somehow, questioning free trade is equated with being anti-democratic, pro-…

It is one of the great ironies of the unsustainable economy that those who most desperately need money are denied it, or made to pay an exorbitant price to get it. Most banks consider the poor as ‘un…

economic growth is no longer (if it ever was) a guarantee for creating jobs. Jobless economic growth is the new reality. Therefore a fundamental re-perception needs to occur about the way that we str…

The ‘sustainability investment’ phenomenon can be traced back to the beginnings of the corporate social responsibility movement in the United States in the 1930s. But it only really became visible in…

The explosive growth of this global casino of financial markets is largely as a result of introducing two new games: futures and derivatives trading, beginning in the 1970. Not so long ago, the grave…

This podcast introduces the economists’ useful notion of ‘externalities’ or spill-over effects. In the unsustainable economy, companies impose costs on society and nature without paying for these dam…

The world we live in is exceedingly complex. We use indicators to simplify things. Indicators work in the same way as a map. They are meant to be a guide, a representation of reality, which help us t…

Products and services will need to shapeshift radically in a sustainable world. It will no longer be acceptable or successful to follow the old approach of producing widgets and flogging them to a ma…

Communication for sustainable companies is a dialogue: an ongoing, two way, interactive process which involves listening as much as talking, and includes non-verbal as well as verbal exchange. These …

Companies have cultivated relationships only from pure self-interest – mostly with shareholders, financial analysts, customers and suppliers. And usually, these interactions have been a pure power pl…

Over the past decade, for example, numerous corporate governance codes have emerged, which require companies to give a more transparent account of how their business is being run and the impacts on t…

Having a leader’s inspiring vision is one thing, but it is like whistling in the wind unless people in the workplace are able to express their own inherent magic – their creativity and imagination, t…

Shapeshifting seldom happens in countries or companies without visionary leadership. Like the revolutionary philosophers and scientists of centuries past, somebody has to be able to step outside of t…

In this podcast, we start going beyond the ‘why’ to the ‘how’ of sustainable business. We explore seven critical dimensions in which shapeshifting needs to occur in order to create sustainable compan…

In the 1970s, it was thanks to the zealous efforts of the sustainability prophets that a new social phenomenon was born – the green movement. However, with the spate of industrial accidents in the 19…

Before exploring how sustainability will change economics and business, we need to understand what sustainability is and what it is not, and how it came about as a force in our society. Sustainabilit…

What if, in business, Lion was no longer king? What if Elephant was king (or queen) once more? For, according to the theme of this podcast, in the corporate bushveld of the future where social equity…