Are employees the social innovators and intrapreneurs organisations now need to lead by example? One thing is clear, innovators alone will not be able to drive the systemic change we need to address climate change and achieve social justice. The corporate world is being challenged from within - by activist shareholders and employees - to play its part. Join us as we explore the world of business and how resistance is necessary to make business a force for good.
We see activism as a whole range of activities that change the priorities we work on. Insisting we talk about the real issues. This is about speaking truth to power. Starting with resistance and standing for our values and the possible future we envision. This is where activism crosses paths with innovation.
Kwame Ferreira, founder of Impossible and Tessa Wernink, co-founder of Fairphone & the Undercover Activist have been doing (social) innovation for a long time. More recently, they have been diving into activism and what it means for business.
We see that innovation without activism in the mix challenging the status quo, does not move the needle. It does not change the norm. Does that make activism a necessary ingredient to ensure innovation is not just benefiting the user but also other layers of the ecosystem?
In Part 1 of Season three, we move from entrepreneurs to intrapreneurs. From social innovators to activists. And question whether activism can speed up innovation for businesses to lead.
We speak to experts in the field of good business and leadership like Megan Reitz and Alison Taylor. And hear from employee activists and community organisers Christian Vanizette, Manuel Salazar, Gail Bradbrook and Desiree Fixler. Full Interviews with the speakers are on the Season 3 page
Snippets and Credits for this Episode
Planetary Podcast Interview Stefanie Hauer with Desiree Fixler
Bloomberg Wealth: Nelson Peltz
Shareholders vs. Stakeholders -- Friedman vs. Freeman Debate - R. Edward Freeman
E118: AI FOMO frenzy, macro update, Fox vs Dominion, US vs China & more with Brad Gerstner
2023 Investor Day speech - Elon Musk
The Tipping Elements - Johan Rockström Davos 2023
Where’s the political will? - Al Gore Davos 2023
Climate Change debate - Bjørn Lomborg and Andrew Revkin | Lex Fridman Podcast #339
#79 — The Road to Tyranny - Sam Harris in conversation with Timothy Snyder
Tessa Wernink
Throughout history we’ve always had activists. People who acted on behalf of a cause, who energised social movements, who embodied humanistic values.
00:00
Kwame Ferreira
In innovation we have 3% of people who do things differently. Radically differently. People who think outside the box. Again, the box is there because most of us like boundaries, predictability, safety.
00:20
Tessa Wernink
We call them all kinds of things: troublemakers, rebels, and more recently innovators and change makers or rock stars. It takes a certain type of person to go against the tyranny of the majority, but that doesn't mean everyone has to be radical to be an activist.
00:34
Kwame Ferreira
Lucy Basch whom we had in the first season of this podcast with a French unicorn To Good to Go, saw the food waste problem, and decided to create a platform that aligns the needs of citizens with the needs of the planet Counterintuitive. Radically different. Ingvar kamprad at Ikea decided not to assemble his furniture. There are a number of examples of counterintuitive initiatives that change the shape of the box, and in doing so, change the shape of the world we inhabit. You can argue that this change is still in the capitalistic framework, a framework that has lifted us from poverty and raised our overall quality of life. But that is not the point we're trying to make.
00:50
Tessa Wernink
Activism, the enactment of influence towards a cause bigger than our own self-interest is now at the heart of capitalism, and it's changing capitalism from within. Women would not be able to vote. People of color would still be deprived of basic human rights. The list goes on. It is, however, a shorter list because activists acted and resisted. Activism is not confined to social or economic or legal issues. There is a new type of activism at the heart of capitalism inside companies demanding change from within. Change for the biggest transformation agents of the Anthropocene; large corporations.
01:34
Tessa Wernink
Welcome to the third season of What, if We get It Right? This season, we're teaming up Kwame and I that is from Impossible and the Undercover Activist to bring you a season about business activism. For our first two seasons, we spoke to innovators and entrepreneurs. They were questioning systems and developing ethical business practices and products that are changing the world. For this season, we're honing in on activism, employee activism, corporate activism, shareholder activism, and the big question of whether we need this in business.
02:20
Kwame Ferreira
We've been doing innovation for a long time, but without activism in the mix, challenging the status quo, we're not moving the needle, we're not changing the norm. Activism is the necessary ingredient to ensure innovation is not just benefiting the user, but also other layers of the ecosystem. Activism speeds up innovation for businesses to lead. I'm Kwame Ferreira, artist and Entrepreneur, and I joined Tessa Wernink, founder of the Undercover Activist, on a short journey through corporate activism. How activism goes hand in hand with innovation, how we need to speak up and resist. And how some companies are able to embrace activism to triumph in the face of bad leadership. We're not gonna start with Spartacus and the Slave Revolt, or the Boston Tea Party, or even Bob Hunter, founder of Greenpeace. We're going to start this journey with what Americans call shareholder activism.
02:56
Nelson Peltz
We're not there to do all the terrible things that typically go along with the term activist. We're just trying to get these companies to operate better the way they used to.
03:50
Kwame Ferreira
The way they used to. There is a nostalgia embedded in Peltz's words. I'm not sure we can go back. I am sure that the future of corporations is a little bit more ambitious. Shareholders aren't the only stakeholders.
04:01
Tessa Wernink
Edward Freeman, an American philosopher and professor known for his work on stakeholder theory would say that if Milton Friedman were alive today, he would be a little more ambitious.
04:16
Edward Freeman
I actually think if Milton Friedman were alive today, I think he'd be a stakeholder theorist. I think he would understand that the only way to create value for shareholders in today's world is to pay attention to customers, suppliers, employees, communities, and shareholders at the same time.
04:28
Tessa Wernink
This all-encompassing ambition clashes with a more simplistic approach of just focusing on profit.But it also adds a lot of confusion to the mix:
04:46
Alison Taylor
There is a kind of collective confusion, which is that we have no idea and no agreement on what it means to be a good business anymore. I mean, a business that does the right thing.
04:55
Tessa Wernink
That was Alison Taylor. A clinical professor at NYU Stern School of Business.
05:07
Alison Taylor
It used to be seen in quite simple terms as being just a case of not breaking the law. It clearly isn't that anymore, but we don't have a very good, uh, collective agreement on what is good and what is bad.
05:11
Kwame Ferreira
And the confusion she's alluding to is non-existent in Silicon Valley as illustrated by people like venture capitalists, Chamath Palihapitiya. Commenting on recent events around Disney's corporate activism.
05:24
Chamath Palihapitiya
Disney needs to just be business people and not feed the vocal minorities inside of their company like every other company should. They should be subject to shareholder concerns that apply to the majority of shareholders.
05:35
Desiree Fixler
When companies were riding high valuations and the economy was booming basically from 2013 until the pandemic activism increased its presence in corporations. Now with a shift to AI and a global recession. From a Silicon Valley perspective, it looks like activism is giving way to back to basics innovation.
05:48
Tessa Wernink
And like we had seen from the ashes of the.com collapse in the early two thousands, a lot of the weak players are weeded out and it gives rise to the more credible, competent, and stronger players.
06:08
Kwame Ferreira
Former group sustainability officer at DWS Group, Deutsche Bank. It feels as though activism was a luxury companies had during a bull market until Elon came and set the example for other CEOs to follow by letting go of the majority of his workforce at Twitter. Particularly dissenting voices. But we must not forget that the journey of innovation and activism is a journey that is not always aligned.
06:19
Alison Taylor
Interesting is we don't even have very good words to talk about these subjects. So we talk about ethics. A lot of people don't like it. People associate it with compliance. And then we've got jargony acronyms like E, S G. Um, and so even if you try and have a clear, straightforward conversation, one big problem is that first of all, you've gotta wade through a thicket of jargon before you can even get to the point.
06:46
Tessa Wernink
The thinking around shareholder economy is changing to what organizations such as B Corp call the stakeholder economy. Meaning that businesses need to be more ambitious, more ambitious than just protecting the interest of shareholders. They need to be better citizen. In other words, the value system is shifting from profit to planet.
07:11
Kwame Ferreira
In early 2023, Tesla made their mission around decarbonization a central piece of their comms. Maybe borrowed from Bill Gates's book, but planet centric. Nonetheless.
07:31
Elon Musk
The story ,and I think it, this holds together quite well, and it'll be actually publishing, , detailed white paper with all of our assumptions and calculations. Is that there is a clear path to a fully sustainable earth, with abundance. In fact, you could support a civilization much bigger than Earth. I'm just often shocked and surprised by how few people realize this. So we're gonna walk through the calculations for how to create a sustainable energy civilization.
07:43
Kwame Ferreira
It's a confusing time when some innovators who share the agenda of activists, namely on decarbonization, still behave as though only shareholders matter. My first connection with activism in business was through social entrepreneurship. People were challenging the way business is done, the way products are made. At Fairphone, the company we set up, we wanted to make a phone in a way that was fair to people and planet. Putting social values first, like circular design, repair, living wages.
08:14
Tessa Wernink
According to a headline in The Guardian, we were disrupting the mobile phone market with values. The activism I'm referring to is different from shareholder activism, which is focused on profit. Rather, it is a bottom up movement to change the current economic model, which is harmful to people and the planet. There are different ways people are trying to challenge the capitalist mindset that has been dominant for so many decades. Sure, some shareholders are trying to get companies to make more money, but there are others who are uniting to push for green agendas. There are organizations who are taking their governments and businesses to court for not doing enough in the face of the climate crisis a rising number of citizens are protesting in the streets. Youth movements like Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion, and corporations like Patagonia and Ben and Jerry's are taking a political stand on important issues. And now there's even a new way where people who work at a company are speaking up for change. It's called employee activism. It's when pressure to change comes from within a business. We want to see what employee activism in today's world means for business and changing our economic system. So first, let's listen to Megan Reitz who has been researching employee activism for years.
08:45
Megan Reitz
I'm Megan Reitz. I'm so Professor of Leadership and Dialogue at Hult International Business School. What's activism? When I say the word activism, what comes to mind? What images, what emotions, what thoughts, what experiences? And there, you know, you are well aware that there is no definition that is right here. We do know that there is a very wide spectrum of understanding around the word activism, and it's a very controversial term in some parts of the world more than others. So we've surveyed thousands of people around what activism means to them, and it means everything from very positive stuff to do with change and purpose and passion. Through to pretty negative connotations to do with violence, rebellion, aggression, and everything in between. Now in our research, what we have been examining and our definition if you like, of employee activism is around voices of difference. Inside organizations that seek to influence their organization's policy and actions on wider social and environmental issues. If you are labeled as an activist, in some parts of the world and on, some topics, it's great, you are really cool and in other parts of the world, it costs you your life.
10:01
Christian Vanizette
And for me, an activist is someone who is launching movements or campaigns. In order to change either, a way of thinking of the general public, so it's like has an impact on the culture or either to change regulations and frameworks so that the policy makers listen to these demands and implement them.
11:41
Tessa Wernink
We talked to Christian Vanizette founder of Makes Sense, a global network supporting social entrepreneurs. He's now turning to activism and has launched a new tool called Regroop.
12:03
Christian Vanizette
So my name is Christian. I come from Tahiti, French Polynesia. It's a small island in the Pacific Pacific Ocean. 12 years ago now, I started a nonprofit called MakeSense.org.
12:13
Christian Vanizette
So we start up incubators for social entrepreneurs across the world and also, uh, funds to invest in those project. And so right now we manage around hundred million euros that we invest in projects. And at the same time, we have this, uh, huge community of 300,000 volunteers across the world who are volunteering for solidarity projects in their neighbourhood. So what I realized uh, working on makes sense for 12 years is that we can build new startups so people, uh, take bikes instead of cars in the cities. We can make people in volunteering programs. like help the environment by volunteering for a nonprofit to decrease carbon emission and stuff, it's great. But when you look at the urgency on the climate front, um, It's like these solutions needs to grow faster. And the reason they don't grow faster is not because it's not the right time. It's not because they can't scale, it's because the legal frameworks and also the, the, the regulations are not giving them an advantage. Uh, a lot of regulations are giving an advantage to the people who continue to pollute. And so what I'm thinking is like maybe the best way to change those regulations is activism.
12:25
Kwame Ferreira
The companies Christian is targeting are doing a lot worse than underperforming. They're complicit in jeopardizing our future and polluting our now. We already see the changes happening with extreme weather conditions, flooding, snow storms, crazy tornadoes and climate refugees everywhere, disturbing social stability.
13:36
Tessa Wernink
Listen to Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, followed by Al Gore, the former vice president of the us. Both of them were speaking at the World Economic Forum.
13:55
Johan Rockstrom
We're actually pushing the entire Earth system to a point of destabilization, pushing earth outside of the state that has support civilization since we left the last ice age 10,000 years ago. This requires a transformation to safe and just earth system boundaries for the whole world economy.
14:06
Al Gore
Every piece of pro climate legislation, the oil and gas industry and the coal industry, they come in and fight it tooth and nail.
14:25
Kwame Ferreira
The techno optimists, innovators and entrepreneurs think that alarmism started by Greta Thunberg has not been helpful. They think alarmism is playing to a political agenda, rather than solving real issues.
14:33
Greta Thunberg
Of course, we need constructive dialogue, but they've now had 30 years of blah, blah, blah, and where has that? But of course we can still turn this around. It is entirely possible. It will take drastic annual emission cuts unlike anything the world has ever seen.
14:46
Tessa Wernink
[00:15:03] Tessa Wernink: Listen to Lex Friedman speaking to Bjorn Loberg. Lomborg is author of False Alarm, how Climate Change Panic Costs US Trillions. And Andrew Redkin, environmental journalist. They discussed the need for alarmism and whether panic is helpful.
15:03
Lex Friedman
Is there a better term than alarmism? Communication of like, holy shit we should be thinking about this.
15:18
Andrew Revkin
I think she's done a service in the sense that she's gotten more people to talk about climate. Uh, and that's good because Uh, I think it's, uh, unfortunate and this is just what happens in almost all policy discussions that they end up being, you know sort of discussions from, from the extreme groups because it's just more fun on media. It's no longer a belief fight over is global warming real or not? You say, well, what kind of energy future do you want? That's a very different question than. Stop global warming.
15:28
Tessa Wernink
Is it though, is it about asking what kind of energy future we want? It seems that imagining where we want to go is not stopping business as usual.
15:56
Al Gore
We have the technologies that are in development, we see the pathway, uh, to improve them. We know how to get there.
16:05
Christian Vanizette
And so for me, it's really like the social entrepreneurs. They build the innovations. They show that there's another way of doing it that still can create jobs, and that we can have energy without increasing the emissions. And then the activists make sure, like the frameworks, the policy makers, because of the, negotiations, they start in some ways with the government, make it that those solutions will be, uh, uh, like, uh, pushed forward and supported more. To me at the end, it matters is like what are the carbon emissions, uh, and uh, what are the, all the tools we have to decrease those emissions at the speed we need in order based on what the science says.
16:13
Tessa Wernink
The crisis is still getting worse faster than we are deploying these solutions and we need to make changes quickly. Emissions are still going up.
16:54
Christian Vanizette
And so this is the, the key question. And then it's not about whether it's social entrepreneurship, what is the scale and what is the, the, the dynamic dynamic that will create, that will accelerate that change? And for me, I don't see these two as competing. It's really helping each other.
17:04
Kwame Ferreira
In the light of insurmountable data, the alarm is, is not only justified, it is needed. Activism has raised the alarm. It's pushing for the political change that needs to come from the top, from within companies and institutions. Without this change from the top, we're not letting enough sunshine to allow alternatives to flourish from the bottom. And that's the big question. What kind of leadership is out there? What do we need? Megan Reitz professor of Leadership and Dialogue at Hult University says we need both. People who come up with a vision and solution who point to the new and manage to gather people and funds to achieve this. And we also need leadership within organizations to understand that they don't know all the answers, realize their perspective is partial, and make room for voices of disagreement
17:22
Megan Reitz
One of the questions we raised in our research report that we published is, is it time to see leadership as activism? And by that we are referring to the broadening of our understanding of what it means to be a good leader. Over the last, you know, however many decades we've viewed good leadership, predominantly in relation to the achievement of performance targets, specific to that organization and to shareholder value, of course. We've perceived good leaders as being those people who are able to come up with a solution or a vision and then persuade everybody else that that's what they need to do. Those skills remain really important. You know, we're not, not throwing those out, but it is unsustainable unless we include in our understanding of leadership, how are we leading and impacting the world? You know, and that's our society in an environment, our ability to see good leaders, as well as those individuals who realize that they don't know the answers, they realize that their perspective is partial, that other people have different sorts of experiences and they are ex. Exceptionally good voice at enabling people to difference, to disagree with them. That's an, that's an exceptionally different way of viewing and understanding leadership.
18:08
Tessa Wernink
But are we listening to these voices of difference?
19:28
Gail Bradbrook
Uh, there are 50 protestors in jail and at the minute in the UK. There's never been that many people in jail.
19:30
Tessa Wernink
Gail Bradbrook is founder of Extinction Rebellion, a global environmental movement using non-violence civil disobedience to compel governments to address climate change and biodiversity loss. She talked to us about climate activism on the streets.
19:36
Gail Bradbrook
I am from Yorkshire. It always feels like it starts with that in the, in the north of England. And my dad was a coal miner, so I have a working class background and I trained in science, so it did, uh, a PhD in molecular biophysics. I took, I've worked in the world of NGOs and charities. I know their limitations. And around 2010 became deeply sensing that mass civil disobedience was part and parcel necessary for change. And you said in your introduction then that we have a right to protest. In the UK, we no longer truly have a right to protest. It's become so authoritarian here in the UK that any forms of effective protesting that might involve, uh, putting your body in the way of something in that non-violent direct action. So trying to stop somebody dropping a tree down or digging a road or whatever, um, that's been effectively outlawed.
19:51
Tessa Wernink
Likewise, extinction Rebellion Activists were lifted out of bed in the Netherlands early 2023. On the charges of incitement, the police said they were calling on citizens to join a non-violent protest in a location for which they had no permission to protest, and they found enough cause to arrest them ahead of the protest. We can have a long discussion about whether this is justified or not, but our point is if climate activists are being arrested on the streets, you can imagine that being an activist in a corporate environment and most hierarchical corporate cultures where voices of difference are not welcomed, requires courage. Activism isn't just about being on the barricades, it starts with resistance.
20:52
Kwame Ferreira
Listen to Timothy Snyder a Yale historian and author of On Tyranny: 20 Lessons from the 20th Century. He wrote this book, taking lessons from the rise of authoritarian regimes throughout history. Timothy's first lesson is: Do not obey in advance.
21:31
Timothy Snyder
If you fail, not obey in advance. If instead, you normalize and you drift things which had seem, which would've seemed abnormal to an earlier version of you, will start to seem normal now The the, the point to start doing anything will never seem to come. You'll keep saying Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. In fact, you'll just be internally adjusting, adjusting, adjusting, and psychologically you become a different person. If people, if people, uh, don't take advantage of the moment they have, if you don't do anything then, then the system changes and the costs of resistance become much, much higher. Protesting having political conversations like the one you and I are having at the moment, the, these things require just a tiny bit of courage, right? Not, not very much, but later when the, when these things start to become illegal or even dangerous, they require much more courage. So politically you have to get out front and do these things.
21:48
Gail Bradbrook
And um, at the heart of a functional democracy is the right to dissent. And the right to protest. Yeah. And in that way I actually think that's reflective of what's going off across the whole world. That we have an economic system that's got destruction baked in. And we have democracies that are failing across the world. It's really important to take matters into our own hands. And in that way, the um, activists within businesses are super crucial at this time. Super crucial. Gail Bradbrook: This system that we're in invites us into paralysis and surrender, you know, so to to actually believe that change is possible makes you a person who is somehow in resistance to a system and wanting to create something new.
22:36
Tessa Wernink
In the second part, we'll be hearing from employee activists, people who are resisting and challenging, and we'll learn how companies are responding to this new world.