The Challenges

Poverty. Climate Change. HIV/AIDS. The contemporary world problems are lined up. We have a world where approximately 4 billion people live on less than $4 a day. A temperature increase in the atmosphere has led to severe climate effects with weather catastrophes, droughts, floods and polar ice meltdowns. The HIV/AIDS epidemic is on its way to make the major part of a whole continent implode, with vicious circles that makes Africa lose parents, teachers, doctors, farmers and bread-winners for families, leaving kids alone in the streets.

The Response

The means to meet these challenges are troubled with business-as-usual thinking. What we need is a more entrepreneurial approach, to think – and act! – outside the box. Or act as if there were no box at all! But not just any kind of entrepreneurship, but entrepreneurship and innovation for sustainability – ‘sustainopreneurship’. In short – Business with a Cause.

Creative Business Organizing for Sustainability

Practically, it means to use business organizing and venturing as a means to solve sustainability-related problems, and while doing so – in the process do things so it does not jeopardize the present and the coming generations ability to fulfil its needs. Usually, when talking about sustainability in the business context, this has been in the focus – to adjust, to adapt, to put constraints to business, and business seen more as of a problem than of a solution. Sustainopreneurship flips this reasoning upside down, as well as from where the solution comes: It views the sustainability agenda as something that creates even greater business opportunities than the problems – making powerful businesses out of mind-blowing creativity of sustainability innovations. And the solution and business emerges from the local context, bottom-up, not top-down. Acting local, thinking global!

Three main dimensions

What differs ‘sustanopreneurship’ from ‘entrepreneurship-as-usual’?. Mainly three dimensions. The purpose of the venturing, first and foremost – answering ‘why do we exist and why are we running this business?’. And two dimensions on the process - answering ‘how are we doing it?’.

1. The purpose of the business is to solve a sustainability-related problem through an innovation (‘sustainability innovation’).
2. The business is taking the innovation to the market using an entrepreneurial approach (expressed as ‘creative organizing’).
3. The process respects the life-supporting system, or in other words securing the present and coming generations of stakeholders to be able to fulfill their needs (an adaption of the generic expression of what is meant by ‘sustainable development’).

Sustainopreneurship – on Wikipedia

From October 17, 2008, Sustainopreneurship was started as an article on Wikipedia, beyond pioneering research efforts in conjunction with world-leading research settings and contexts in both entrepreneurship and sustainable development, placing a firm foundation for future development and deployment of the concept*.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainopreneurship.

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*Note: During 2009 a first draft of a book on topic and concept will be written, one blog post at a time, through a wiki, conversed at a group on a community. Working title: “Sustainopreneurship – Business with a Cause. The Whys, Whats and Hows of Entrepreneurship and Innovation for Sustainability”.

The Goal

The goal of the campaign is to get 1 million hits when you search Google for ‘sustainopreneurship’, and it is targeted to be reached before December 31, 2009. Sounds impossible? Read on.

The Campaign Positions

The campaign has five positions;

1. Get people aware of ‘Sustainopreneurship’ by the Wikipedia entry
2. Communicate the power of entrepreneurship for sustainability
3. Make business activity the premier force for a sustainable world
4. Use social media to educate, tell stories and inspire in its name
5. Get one million quality Google Hits Dec 31, 2009: Websites, Blogs, Articles, Features, Books and by tagging ventures ‘sustainopreneurial’

Read more about the positions with some references here.

Facts on the table – the environment (Stats, Nov 2008)

Google has passed 1 000 000 000 000 indexed pages by July 2008 – that is one trillion web pages. The goal is one millionth of this – or the square root of it. There are three billion pictures on Flickr, six million plus videos on YouTube, and Technorati tracks more than 112 million blogs and over 250 million tagged media. Only microblogging platform Twitter has over 3 million accounts. So, if pictures and videos related to the concept gets tagged, blogs being written about it in all formats – and further down the road in more slow media such as news, articles, magazines, features, books being written about it – the goal is possible to reach. Especially, if the concept creates controversy, polarizing groups with pros and cons, it gets added with the dramaturgy Mainstream Media like. One pro, one con and one writing about the controversy/conflict actually is three hits .

Given the theory of Six Degrees of Separation – we can have it reached only by spreading through social networks.

Let’s do the maths. If everyone who mentions it one way or another (from a simple tagging to an extended deep blog post or article) get eight others to mention it as well, here is the results. Six degrees away, the goal is reached, in the double (using www.calcoolate.com).

Join it

Sustainopreneurship 1MillionHits on Google – Facebook Causes

Join the cause on Facebook – and/or add your supportive comment here below! Especially if you have a blog link, blogging about it or some other contribution you made online, linking to your contribution. Join the Campaign Group on Sustainopreneur’s Café also, especially if you’re not on Facebook, to show your support. That also goes for signing the petition on ThePetitionSite.

[read more »]

Spread it

Invite your friends through the Facebook Causes campaign home, or with the Tell-a-Friend mail from ThePetitionSite. Mail your friends with the shortlink pointing here http://1Mcc.info or use the Tell-a-Friend button below to pick directly from your webmail or any other option – share on Facebook and Social Bookmarking services. Tweet it through twitter with the shortlink http://1mcc.info, (Use this for simple copy&paste: ‘Retweet @aereas: Conceptual campaign 2spread ‘Sustainopreneurship’ concept 2reach 1million Google Hits & apply it! » http://1Mcc.info #1Mcc‘). [read more »]

Blog it

Add your voice to the conversation – what is sustainopreneurship for you? Blog away your thoughts! Contribute to the joint co-discovery to increase knowledge and meaning of the concept. [read more »]

Tag it

When something relates to sustainopreneurship in social media – be sure to tag it ‘sustainopreneurship’: Flickr photos, YouTube videos, Blog posts (technorati), Digg, Delicious links etc. [read more »]

Tip it

Want to create even more leverage to the campaign? Contribute to the campaign overhead costs – give a small contribution to the Campaign Administration. [read more »]

Act upon it!

But – first and foremost. Be sure to start or join a sustainopreneurial venture for yourself – make more stories to be told in its name! You have support available from collected virtual expertise through http://ki-work.com category Sustainability Entrepreneurship. [read more »]

It?

It – the campaign – is initiated and organized by ÆREAS – Association for Enactive Research, Education and Application for Sustainopreneurship. If you want to be a part of the core activities from the community, apply to become a Founding Member. [read more »]

- the first Phase with pages added incrementally to highlight related action

Follow updates on the campaign and this website through the News Feed from http://sustainopreneurship.tumblr.com. You can also follow it through AEREAS Twitter account.

Pages above will be added these days, one by one, and tweeted when done, as a first phase in the campaign – a new announcement through news and microblogs for every new page created to highlight the related action.

Pages published so far;

• Join It [Dec 10, 2008]
  
• [...more to come]

Get notified when a new page gets added through the News RSS Feed or follow AEREAS alt. @sliceonline on Twitter.