In the past few days I have been involved in two starkly different but strangely related events.  The Unilever and Guardian Sustainable Business’ Sustainable Living Debate: Mainstream or pipedream? And Sony and Forum for the Future’s Futurescapes workshop. I found both events to be inspiring and yet limiting at the same time.  To bring optimism and despair.

The Unilever event looked at the question of how in relation to changing consumer behaviour.  Can and will consumers change their behaviour?  How can businesses and brands enable and encourage them to do so?  Of course the one overriding imperative here is that we as society and business as the creators and wealth and profit are finally beginning to wake up to the reality of a severely resourced constrained world.  Though like any addict; we’ve taken the first step of finally admitting we have a habit but are yet to kick that habit.  And if we understand that imperative I’m not sure we have yet grasped the second imperative.  That we are now talking about the need for radical and sustained action in years and not decades.

So for me the how is about forging a new contract between business and the consumer.

It’s about changing the game.  David Jones, CEO of global advertising and communications group Havas, talked in terms of needing a “green blooded” capitalism in which companies and business which don’t embrace sustainability as being core to what they do will simply not survive.  Harsh economics green in tooth and claw.  Others talked about the need for us, as consumers to discover new (well in fact old) values of consumption.  To move away from value being defined as volume by redefining value as longevity and quality.  I can hear my grandmother now!  Or as Tensie Whelan, President of the Rainforest Alliance, put it, we need to move away from defining ourselves buy what we have to defining ourselves by what we strive to be.

This is no dewy eyed dream of past pastoral idylls. This is about exciting, funky, sexy futures.  Or at least it had better be.  Otherwise it ain’t gonna happen guys!  Sustainable consumption is about brands.  It is about the power of brands to drive change and deliver solutions that people are looking for.  Brands need to work hard at sustainability so that many of their consumers don’t have to.  Brands as the empowerer and enabler, while maintaining their cachet and the personality that will keep them as popular and powerful as they are today. 

However the debate was also clear about the need for strong government support and clear regulatory frameworks to enable this to happen. CEO’s of major business calling for strong government – don’t tell the press, the CBI or the IoD.  Government needs to be driving this train by sitting alongside business.  Business won’t be able to do it alone.  Business and consumer pressure won’t be enough either – though it will make a huge different.  It is only the coming together of business, consumer pressure and government intervention and leadership that really allows us to crack this problem in the time we have left.  Sadly, the government part of the equation is so terribly lacking around the world today.

One powerful brand and company that appears to get this is Sony.  Their Futurescapes workshop – run in partnership with Forum for the Future – is trying to look at what the world could be like in 2025 and how technology will enable a more sustainable future.  It is using the Forum for the Future’s concept of Futures to map possible scenarios.  It is using four: hyper innovation, shared ownership, centralised survival and prosperity redefined.  None of them are true.  They range from the downright scary, to an Orwellian 1984, to the peaceful uplands of cooperation and harmony.  Though I suspect my peaceful uplands would be others downright scary.  And therein is the problem.

But it doesn’t really matter how true or not these scenarios are.  What matters is the process.  This is both innovative and collaborative.  And as Peter Madden, CEO of Forum for the Future, put it.  You could start from today and look forward to 2025.  But by starting at 2025 and then saying what do we need to do to get us there from today you create a whole new way of thinking.

What’s more the workshop was fun and creativity flowed.  After the inspiration of the opening talks we faced the dread of the breakout groups.  We needn’t have worried.  We needed to look at what 2025 could look like and how technology can help.  One group had to make it, one to paint it, one to write it and the last to say it.  The groups threw up some really interesting and thoughtful ideas and comments.  In the say it group (my group) for instance we talked about the empowering nature of technology, its power to connect, to include, to close distance and to create new social discourses.  But also the power to exclude, to create isolation and distance, even from your own neighbours, and the current global inequality of technology.

All of this was just the start of the Futurescapes conversation.  I’m going to join in as this project develops.  It’s going to be an interesting journey.  Why not come with me?