At Greencarrier, we recently celebrated our 15 years jubilee. One of our guest speakers was Dennis Pamlin who provided some insight into the importance of change within organisations, and the role of transportation in the 21st century. He shared a lot of knowledge and we felt very inspired. This is what we learnt!
We live in the technological era – a fantastic time of opportunities
In 1990, when Greencarrier first saw the light of the day, a Blackberry was the most amazing thing one could carry around. Today, our cell phones are still amazing. (Although, they are not Blackberries anymore, they are iPhones.) They provide us with fantastic opportunities. We can do things now, which we never thought were possible fifteen years ago.
New technology provides new opportunities, and we constantly develop smarter solutions. At the same time, we become more and more people on the planet. Consequently, we have a sustainability challenge that requires transformative steps.
What sustainability is really about
We have one planet and we are soon going to be ten billion people. We simply need to make sure that all ten billion people can live on our planet at the same time. Sustainability is simply about sharing. At the moment, and especially in the western part of the world, we do not live as if we have one planet, though. We live far beyond our assets. We tend to look at things from a short-term perspective, both in time and space. To be able to look at things differently, we need to change perspective.
How we can take transformative steps towards smart and sustainable solutions
Much of the environmental thinking, in general, start with the question “How can we save the planet?” Usually, it constrains us. Surely it has given us things such as environmentally labelled paper and environmentally labelled meat, but it has only gotten us so far. Instead, we need to ask ourselves “How can we get a better life?” We need to switch focus from “products and problems” to “services and solutions”. We should not try to create “a better car”. We should start by asking ourselves “Why do we use the car?” Doing that, one might be surprised that the solution one comes up with isn’t even a car, but a completely different transport solution! (A flying saucer, perhaps!)
Companies often talk about numbers, and how they want to increase or decrease a certain percentage. To be able to create smart sustainable solutions, we need to ditch that way of thinking. We need to start at 1000 percent! Why? Because improvements only improve so much. Also, they get you stuck in old patterns. Just because a Blackberry was the most amazing thing fifteen years ago, it doesn’t mean it is today, right? In this era, it is not the big fish that eats the small fish. It is the fast fish that eats the slow fish. In other words, starting at 1000 percent opens up for completely new opportunities and solutions.
Dennis Pamlin is an entrepreneur and founder of 21st Century Frontiers. He works with companies, governments and NGOs as a strategic economic, technology and innovation advisor. His background is in engineering, industrial economy and marketing. For more info about Dennis Pamlin, visit his website.
/The Blogging Crew
