Guest blog: Match.Me.Up! brings together young entrepreneurs and experienced professionals in Switzerland

With Match.Me.Up! Impact Hub Zurich designed an unusual program to bring together people looking for a meaningful job with fast growing and impact driven start-ups. One thing is for sure: a fulfilling job will become more important than money and status in the long
run.

According to a study by Ashoka and McKinsey over a third of people are looking for purpose-driven work activities in which they can experience the social effects directly. Not a majority. Not a movement yet. But an important trend. For more than every other over 50 yearold a meaningful job is more important than the wage (54%) (Source: Xing). But careers in the social sector are considered unattractive, especially because they are often equated with volunteer work. This is exactly where the program Match.Me.Up! is different: it brings together experienced professionals - not with well-known charity organizations - but with fast-growing start-ups in the area of sustainability. Carsten Rübsaamen, who himself undertook a change of career and moved from being a banker to a social entrepreneurs, was part of the Match.Me.Up! program in 2013 with his start-up "Book Bridge” in search of an Executive Committee member. "Many people want more - more in the sense of that they realize that every decision that you make not only affects yourself but also others. And a job with a start-up gives you more!”, says Carsten. Because in addition to the monetary variables such as salary, status and power there is always also a social and environmental dimension of a job. A large number of people have already realized this today and donate money to various charity organizations. "But Match.Me.Up! shows that one can combine his job with doing good: simply by having a job, "says Niels Rot, co-founder of Impact Hub Zurich and responsible for the Match.Me.Up! program. The whole program is designed as a personal learning journey and includes a "try-out" phase in which the start-up and the candidates can get to know each other during a project-based cooperation, before making the game changing decision. There are over 15 job openings ranking from COO to Head of Business Development and Marketing Manager and Java Software Engineer at various start-ups. The application deadline is October 3, 2014.

Céline Müller
PR and Communication Manager


Impact Hub Zürich
We at Impact Hub Zürich foster innovation through collaboration. Located in buzzing Zürich-West, we provide a space where entrepreneurs and all kinds of innovators come together to prototype new models for a world that works for all - connecting all sectors, industries and cultural backgrounds. We offer access to inspiring work spaces, a vibrant learning community, startup incubation programs, corporate innovation workshops and entrepreneurial leadership trainings. With 7’000+ members in 50+ Impact Hubs across the world, the Impact Hub Network has become the center of gravity for people innovating a new kind of economy. Locally rooted and globally connected.

Sustainability Reporting Today

Sustainability Reporting Today:

 With the advent of sustainability reporting, various indicators and standards have been developed to measure and evaluate sustainability and to anchor it in corporate reporting on value creation. A sustainable commitment to stakeholder relations on an economic, social and ecological level has a proven positive impact on value creation and ultimately also on the strategic success of a company. To make this transparent, the following principles for an integrated sustainability reporting - which are to a certain degree also part of standards such as the Global Reporting Initiative, Integrated Reporting and the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) - can lead the way:

 

-         Strategic Focus: Sustainability should be embedded in a company’s purpose, in its derived vision and in its strategic objectives. This forms an essential basis for a periodic corporate sustainability reporting at a strategic level.

-         Embeddedness: Not only singular projects, but the entire strategy development and revision should be communicated comprehensively to make the company’s attractiveness visible for current and future partners. It is deliberately not about retaining information to calm down stakeholders and to secure competitive advantages over competitors, but about gaining strategic stakeholders for a mutual corporate value creation process.

-         Inclusion: When different stakeholders contribute to value creation, it is crucial to also recognize these stakeholders as owners of their contributed values. This is based on an extended understanding of ownership. Here, the concept of ownership refers not only to material goods or financial resources, but also to intangible issues such as knowledge and experience. With their knowledge and experience, stakeholders provide property for a company in a broader sense. Like the financial owners, they have therefore the right to be adequately involved in processes regarding their property and to be informed accordingly.

-         Commitment: In a purely economic view, profit distribution (residual profit) primarily targets shareholders. This is also predominantly reported on. Especially because the management has to make discretionary decisions about the shareholders’ compensations, e.g. how much of the profit is being distributed and how much is being retained (pay-out-ratio). When other stakeholders, in the sense of a broader concept of ownership, contribute significantly to the corporate value creation process, these stakeholders should also be a compulsory part of the distribution of tangible and intangible values as well as receive information accordingly.

 A sustainability reporting based on these principles suggests that companies can create more values with and for stakeholders.

 Sybille Sachs

 

Europe Today: From Great Crises and Great Visions

Europe is not in a condition to think about great visions. It is busy with solving its debt crisis. One great discussion is if Eurobonds could or should be part of the solution. The European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Olli Rehn, spoke last week at the EU summit for a deeper integration as a precondition of a launch of such Eurobonds. With this he hit the nail on the head: Deeper integration. It is often said that Europe growths through crises. The idea is that during crises Europe is compelled to find steps leading towards a deeper integration which are necessary for its continued existence.

                                                          

But is this only possible through crises? No. It is also possible through visions. A vision can be seen as a positive connoted motivation-factor for activities leading to more integration. Visions in this sense are the contrary of crises which are negative connoted motivation-factors. In contrast, a deeper integration is not a vision as such. It is more an objective behind the scene, which only can be ‘sold’ with difficulty because of its missing emotionality and concrete associations.

Europe's missing of a vision is also often said to be a disadvantage in the competition with other powerful regions such as China, North America, South Asia, Brasil etc. Emerging markets like India or China all have generally the vision of an economic catch up. Although this is quite a down-to-earth vision its implementation is a big challenge confirming the character of a vision as an imagined ideal (end-)state far away from an actual state.

But what could be a vision for Europe? Why not an economy integrated in a comprehensive ecologically sustainable recycling-system? On the one hand we have today in many countries in Europe different recycling-systems. A simple example are PET- and glass-bottles recycling-systems. But on the other hand we still have many products and processes using too many resources. For example there are still products made after the strategy of planned obsolescence (products with intentionally integrated weaknesses with the aim to reduce their life-time and to bring people to buy earlier new ones. It is also looked that reparations are no options).

Planned obsolescence is a resource-intensive (the product-turnover is very high) one-way strategy (many ‘dead’ products are landing on uncontrolled disposal sites in Western Africa or elsewhere in the third world). The strategy is legitimized by the argument that it secures a lot of workplaces and a prosperous economy. In a time where we know that resources are scarce linear one-way strategies aren’t options. In the long run there is no other way than to fit all economical processes into a sustainable recycle-system that has the form of a circle where all resources – from address-notes on paper to zinc carbon batteries – can circulate several or even endless times. Thus, the aim of an economy completely (and not only partly) integrated in a comprehensive recycling-system could be a vision for Europe.

By searching for economic, technical and political ways to implement the necessary steps to achieve these aims Europe would have the necessary challenges buttressing its integration. The vision, if taken seriously, would need creative and innovative ideas and would create workplaces. It probably also could be an example for emerging markets which may soon have caught up to the West and then are looking for new meaningful, pragmatic and future-leading visions. There are many possible visions for economically developed regions and countries. The mere protection of what has been achieved or the solving of serious (homemade) crises aren’t visions. Arguments that Europe can’t find a new vision because it is sluggish and replete are cheap and helpless justifications: If Europe wants to prosper and to stay one of the important regions in the world there is only one way: Europe needs a vision.

Claude Meier

Walmart – Civilizing the Chinese?

Your first reaction to reading this title may well be one of bafflement (what does Walmart have to do with civilizing anything?!), or if you happen to be Chinese, of likely indignation (how can a fifty year old American retail megastore contribute anything to our august, thousand year old civilization?!). But – as preposterous as it may seem – there is indeed a kernel of truth in this proposition. Let me explain.

The word “civilize” has its etymological roots in the French word “civilité”, which initially denoted the refined manners and decorum at French aristocratic courts. With repeated initiatives to – yes, “civilize” – the Chinese (as in their “no spitting on the street” campaign), the Chinese leadership is keen at molding the behavior of its citizens for the better. Recent outrage involving food manufacturers deliberately fortifying food with poisonous substances in order to cut costs, with employee unrest and even suicides (such as at Foxconn) in response to poor working conditions, as well as the omnipresent environmental pollution scandals, has the Chinese regime become increasingly edgy and aware that things need to change.

Enter Walmart.

Much as the Chinese regime, Walmart has seen itself confronted by a customer base ever more bent on better quality food, disgruntled employees (as with a high publicity class-action suit by female employees) and a questionable environmental record driven by aggressive rock bottom pricing on many of its throw-away products. So starting in 2004, Walmart’s then CEO Lee Scott proactively contacted environmentalist NGOs such as the Rocky Mountain Institute and the Environmental Defense Fund for assistance as to how to better manage its environmental track record.

What resulted is no less than remarkable. Wall-Mart has, since its entry to the Chinese market in 1996, become the leader in China as pertains to food quality, implementing rigorous food quality standards for its suppliers and launching an ambitious – and well received – organic food initiative. Moreover, the company has significantly reduced its packaging material volume and pressured its suppliers to cut energy consumption and pollution. The Chinese suppliers, while at first skeptical, are now keen to advertise their environmental objectives and successes. The Chinese shoppers, for their part, are delighted to get better quality food and organic produce, trusting a big company like Walmart more than smaller shops which are – in their eyes – more prone to cheat them and offer inferior quality products. And the Chinese regime is pleased to have such a potent partner in addressing these pressing problems and “civilizing” its companies and citizens. In sum, we have an excellent example of numerous stakeholders working in sync to achieve a win-win situation for all.

So all is good that ends well? Well, it may be too soon to bring out all the trumpets. While Walmart in China serves de facto as an extension of the Chinese government’s regulatory efforts and as a “civilizing” factor for its citizens, it is legitimate to question the long-term sustainability of such an in the end effect still purely instrumental objective. Nonetheless, there is reasonable hope that at least parts of it may be sustainable due to an interesting insight that the sociologist Norbert Elias outlined as part of any civilizing process. Therein, he posits that to become “civilized” entails individuals to restrain their drives and affects. In a first phase, this is achieved through a permanent outside authority and on pain of punishment. With time, however, in a second stage, there arises a moral code that is upheld by individuals even in absence of the threat of punishment, driven by people suffering from a bad conscience in light of failure to adhere to these mores. In the last phase, then, even such self-constraints dissipate, and individuals are intrinsically motivated in a very natural manner to adhere to the involved normative standards.

This is, in essence, what is beginning to occur in China in part with the help of Walmart (and also other parts of the world in other contexts), where social and environmental responsibility by corporations and individuals is becoming ever more part of the discussion, part of the regulatory and legal fabric and as well as public awareness in form of a normative “should”. Normative change, while it may initially have to be forced upon individuals and corporations, may in due time become second nature to them. We as a global civilization, as is apparent also in China, seem to be “primed” for a major normative paradigm change towards greater social and environmental responsibility. And, as we have seen, even a major multinational corporation such as Walmart can play a significant role in this “civilizing” process, if the necessary extrinsic motivation is there and a society is ready to reward such a change.

Manuel Heer Dawson

 For a fascinating and detailed account of Walmart’s social and environmental impact in China, read the “How Walmart is Changing China”, by Orville Schell in The Atlantic: http://tinyurl.com/bopuxsa

 The Class Room as an Advertising Zone

The newspaper “Sonntag” published last weekend an article on Apple’s marketing strategy at schools (http://snipurl.com/227ahrp). And sure enough, Apple knows how to promote its products.

Apple has got a 70.4 percent share of the market at Swiss schools. But it seems that the company’s goal is to have an even stronger monopolistic role in this very important market. To reach its aim Apple launches new marketing projects. Its marketing strategy focuses on the teachers. “Apple Distinguished Educators” (ADEs) is a worldwide community of visionary educators whose goal is to make a difference in the future of education. ADEs teach students, share their expertise with other educators and advise Apple on the realities of integrating technology into learning environments (http://snipurl.com/227apep). One has to admit that this idea is a great example of stakeholder involvement in the development and innovation of products. Educators have to apply for being a member of this worldwide community. Already 28 Swiss teachers have got the honor to be ADEs.

Additionally the Education-Team at Apple Switzerland is implementing the global “Apple Professional Development Program”. It should complement the offers of the University of Teacher Education in information and communication technology (ICT). Teachers teach teachers how to use Apple products in the class room.

Furthermore regional training centers are built, a pilot project allocates iPads for schools and Apple is developing school books in all four national languages for iPads. Apple pursuits a pretty offensive marketing strategy, but also Microsoft tries to bind schools to its products, what already caused differences with the Swiss government (http://snipurl.com/227b86u).

These examples show that the education market is very important for tech companies and therefore highly competitive. As education is part of the public sector the companies role in this area should be controversially discussed.

The critical aspects of the mentioned marketing strategies are multifarious.

Both enterprises try to consolidate their market position by their campaigns at schools. As the knowhow of using technology is very important for nowadays education and schools only have limited financial resources, these “public-private partnerships” are actually important. But the problem is that these examples aren’t real public-private partnerships. And so we have to ask ourselves who gains more profit out of these collaborations.

As this kind of products and especially the brand behind the product have got an emotional component and want to influence the attitude to life, it becomes very important for the companies to win young customers. Therefore the campaigns at schools are part of a very clever marketing strategy. But do we want ad men to teach our children? Or shouldn’t class rooms rather be commercial-free?!

If the public reacts skeptical on companies that sponsor professorships, then Apple’s behavior has to provoke skeptic too. The given examples raise the issue of independency of the educators or institutions to a certain extent. Teachers who simultaneously operate as Apple-ambassadors will find themselves in a conflict of interest. But independent education is one of the most important aspects for the development of knowledge.

Sustainable solutions are important to reduce our dependency on these companies. We should care about the sustainable education at our schools and not about sustainable volume of sales for Apple and Co.

Sabrina Stucki